Plutarch Quotes
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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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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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Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does.
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When asked why he parted with his wife, Cæsar replied, 'I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.'
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In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
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Learn to be pleased with everything...because it could always be worse, but isn't!
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Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
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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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Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
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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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If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw.
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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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Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.
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Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.
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Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.
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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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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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The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.
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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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He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself.
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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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Character is simply habit long continued.
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Custom is almost a second nature.
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Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.