Plutarch Quotes

277 Sourced Quotes

The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.

Plutarch
Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man.

Plutarch
Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast.

Plutarch
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.

Plutarch
As small letters hurt the sight, so do small matters him that is too much intent upon them; they vex and stir up anger, which begets an evil habit in him in reference to greater affairs.

Plutarch
For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich.

Plutarch
The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it.

Plutarch
He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself

Plutarch
He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it.

Plutarch
What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful; what but Will, if rightly ordered, prove productive and bring its fruit to maturity? What strength of body is there which will not lose its vigor and fall to decay by laziness, nice usage, and debauchery?

Plutarch
But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence.

Plutarch
Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.

Plutarch
Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.

Plutarch
For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium from the elite than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them.

Plutarch
We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.

Plutarch
For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words.

Plutarch
Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.

Plutarch
Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.

Plutarch
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.

Plutarch
Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.

Plutarch
When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.

Plutarch
Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say.

Plutarch
They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men.

Plutarch
Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without nature is like the maimed; practice without both these is incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed: in the same way nature corresponds to the soil; the teacher to the husbandman; precepts and instruction to the seed.

Plutarch
Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty.

Plutarch
The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater.

Plutarch