Plutarch Quotes
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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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Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.
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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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Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies.
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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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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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Learn to be pleased with everything...because it could always be worse, but isn't!
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The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants.
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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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He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.
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Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
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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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Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say.
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Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house.
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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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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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I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is.
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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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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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Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow Souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and look down upon the World with Contempt; but a truly noble and resolved Spirit appears greatest in Distress, and then becomes more bright and conspicuous.
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Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
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When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, 'That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.''
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It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.
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When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, 'This is a wonderful speech,' said he; 'but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets.'