Plutarch Quotations

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions.

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

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.

Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.

When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door.

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

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.

Paulus Aemilius, on taking command of the forces in Macedonia, and finding them talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all commanders, issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keen swords, and leave the rest to

The whole life is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.

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

To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them.

The richest soil, if cultivated, produces the rankest weeds

Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone.

The measure of a man is way he bears up under misfortune

As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.

The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors

A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me.''

For man is a plant, not fixed in the earth, nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising as it were from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven.

The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.

The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best.

Barba non facit philosophum

Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own.

The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.

Time is the wisest of all counselors.

It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.

No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

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.

For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.

Painting is silent poetry.

To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal.

Democritus said, words are but the shadows of actions.

Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless.

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.

The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart.

...To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage

Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.

Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy.

The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.

Oh, what a world full of pain we create, for a little taste upon the tongue.

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.

Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers.

Neither blame or praise yourself.

Character is long-standing habit.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.

Choose what is best, and habit will make it pleasant and easy.

Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.

In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing.

For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.

Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.

A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but also when they are old and past service.

I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is.

The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it.

I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.

Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real

A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare . . . There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.

I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.

Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?

What, did you not know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus?

Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.

Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.

It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible to recall what has been uttered.

A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need.