Plutarch Quotes

277 Sourced Quotes

Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.

Plutarch
To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic."

Plutarch
Themistocles said to Antiphales, "Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson".

Plutarch
Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures.

Plutarch
After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws."

Plutarch
When asked why he parted with his wife, Caesar replied, "I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected."

Plutarch
Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.

Plutarch
Democritus said, words are but the shadows of actions.

Plutarch
Seeing the lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black; and he would often go out of doors, after his morning meal, without either shoes or tunic; not that he sought vain-glory from such novelties, but he would accustom himself to be ashamed only of what deserves shame, and to despise all other sorts of disgrace.

Plutarch
Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.

Plutarch
But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.

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

Plutarch
Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

Plutarch
Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.

Plutarch
The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.

Plutarch
A skillful physician, who, in a complicated and chronic disease, as he sees occasion, at one while allows his patient the moderate use of such things as please him, at another while gives him keen pains and drugs to work the cure.

Plutarch
As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity.

Plutarch
Though others before him had triumphed three times, Pompeius, by having gained his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and this the last over Asia, seemed in a manner to have brought the whole world into his three triumphs.

Plutarch
The first man... ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them.

Plutarch
He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good

Plutarch
There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue.

Plutarch
Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.

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

Plutarch
Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch