Plutarch Quotes

That best and justest fabric of things was of no long continuance, because it wanted that cement which should have kept all together, education.

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."

Most leaders misunderstand this, thinking instead that the greatest benefit in governing is the freedom from being governed themselves.

4. So reason makes all sorts of life easy, and every change pleasant. 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 not you think it a matter worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one? But Crates with only his scrip and tattered cloak laughed out his life jocosely, as if he had been always at a festival. The great power and command of Agamemnon gave him an equal disturbance:

Even those virtues which nature had denied him were imitated by him so successfully that he won more confidence than those who actually possessed them.

Cicero was the first who had any suspicions of his designs upon the government, and, as a good pilot is apprehensive of a storm when the sea is most smiling, saw the designing temper of the man through this disguise of good-humor and affability, and said, that in general, in all he did and undertook, he detected the ambition for absolute power, “but when I see his hair so carefully arranged, and observe him adjusting it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should enter into such a man’s thoughts to subvert the Roman state.

Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, "Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,—Sleep before Death."

For if they do not receive the seed of good doctrines and share with their husbands in intellectual advancement, they, left to themselves, conceive many untoward ideas and low designs and emotions.

When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."

I will show," said Agesilaus, "that it is not the places that grace men, but men the places.

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

"Nevertheless, it is said that the people of Massalia fenced their vineyards round with the bones of the fallen, and that the soil, after the bodies had wasted away in it and the rains had fallen all winter upon it, grew so rich and became so full to its depths of the putrefied matter that sank into it, that it produced an exceeding great harvest in after years, and confirmed the saying of Archilochus​ that "fields are fattened" by such a process."

Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.

King Agis said, "The Lacedæmonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are."

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