Plutarch Quotes
-
The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.
-
Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable.
-
Character is simply habit long continued.
-
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.
-
Socrates said, 'Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.'
-
When he was in great prosperity, and courted by many, seeing himself splendidly served at his table, he turned to his children and said: 'Children, we had been undone, if we had not been undone'.
-
Concerning the dead nothing but good shall be spoken. [Lat., De mortuis nil nisi bonum.]
-
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
-
We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
-
When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion.
-
Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war.
-
Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.
-
Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.
-
Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
-
Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
-
Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."
-
We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.
-
The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.
-
Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.
-
If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw.
-
The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.
-
What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.
-
To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, 'I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.'
-
Demosthenes told Phocion, 'The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage.' 'And you,' said he, 'if they are once in their senses.'