Plutarch Quotes
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The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
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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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The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
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Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
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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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Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.
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I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
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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.
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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."
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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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Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Cæsar and his fortunes in your boat.
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Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.
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Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, 'God forbid that it should ever befall me!'
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In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
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Euripides was wont to say, 'Silence is an answer to a wise man.'
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Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
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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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The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.
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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.