Plutarch Quotes
-
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.
-
Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position.
-
But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
-
The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
-
Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable.
-
A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, 'I do not believe you can do as much.' 'True,' said he, 'but every goose can.'
-
Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
-
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."
-
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
-
Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, 'God forbid that it should ever befall me!'
-
The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes.
-
He that first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defense against a knave, was but an ill teacher, advising us to commit wickedness to secure ourselves.
-
Eat not thy heart; which forbids to afflict our souls, and waste them with vexatious cares.
-
We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.
-
To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates a shoemaker's son for his mean birth, 'My nobility,' said he, 'begins in me, but yours ends in you.'
-
Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
-
Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
-
Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.
-
Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.
-
He said that in his whole life he most repented of three things: one was that he had trusted a secret to a woman; another, that he went by water when he might have gone by land; the third, that he had remained one whole day without doing any business of moment.
-
Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Cæsar and his fortunes in your boat.
-
Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures.
-
We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
-
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.