Plutarch Quotes
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Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable.
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Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war.
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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.'
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The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration.
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Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
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The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.
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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.
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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'.
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Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
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There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it.
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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.
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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.
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The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
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The saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, 'The enemy's ships are more than ours,' replied, 'For how many then wilt thou reckon me?'
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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.
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Eat not thy heart; which forbids to afflict our souls, and waste them with vexatious cares.
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Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores You keep to your own ways, and leave mine to me.
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The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
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Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,-thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.
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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.
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Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
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Concerning the dead nothing but good shall be spoken. [Lat., De mortuis nil nisi bonum.]
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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.
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Eurybiades lifting up his staff as if he were going to strike, Themistocles said, 'Strike, if you will; but hear'.