Plutarch Quotes
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Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
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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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Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.
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Eat not thy heart; which forbids to afflict our souls, and waste them with vexatious cares.
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Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
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We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
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Menenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: 'It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites.'
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Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.
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What meal is not expensive? That for which no animal is put to death. … one participating of feeling, of seeing, of hearing, of imagination, and of intellection; which each animal hath received from Nature for the acquiring of what is agreeable to it, and the avoiding what is disagreeable.
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Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.
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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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Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces.
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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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When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion.
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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.
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Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
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Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.
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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.
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Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.
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King Agis said, "The Lacedaemonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are."
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Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.
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In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
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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.
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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.