Plutarch Quotes

277 Sourced Quotes

It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.

Plutarch
For many, as Cranton tells us, and those very wise men, not now but long ago, have deplored the condition of human nature, esteeming life a punishment, and to be born a man the highest pitch of calamity; this, Aristotle tells us, Silenus declared when he was brought captive to Midas.

Plutarch
Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.

Plutarch
Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch
Let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted.

Plutarch
Remember what Simonides said,—that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.

Plutarch
What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.

Plutarch
There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither."

Plutarch
To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."

Plutarch
Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.

Plutarch
About Pontus there are some creatures of such an extempore being that the whole term of their life is confined within the space of a day; for they are brought forth in the morning, are in the prime of their existence at noon, grow old at night, and then die.

Plutarch
Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.

Plutarch
Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."

Plutarch
"Young men," said Caesar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."

Plutarch
Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.

Plutarch
Pythagoras, when he was asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of this world.

Plutarch
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.'"

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

Plutarch
Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring?"

Plutarch
Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises.

Plutarch
There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," 68 and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

Plutarch
Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.

Plutarch
Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them. Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale.

Plutarch
To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."

Plutarch
Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!"

Plutarch
For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome.

Plutarch
Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Plutarch
Pyrrhus said, "If I should overcome the Romans in another fight, I were undone."

Plutarch
Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.

Plutarch
Ingratitude towards great and excellent men are common in popular governments.

Plutarch