Plutarch Quotes

Lycurgus, who ordered that a great piece of money should be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no discourse to be current which did not contain in few words a great deal of useful and curious sense.

The art of wise administration consist in making certain concessions and granting that which will please the people, while demanding in return an obedience and cooperation which will benefit the whole community. p235-236

Education and study, and the favours 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.

For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made him resolute and firm in his opinions, and the boldness of his temper raised a sort of passion in him for surmounting difficulties; as if it were not enough to be always victorious in the field, unless places and seasons and nature herself submitted to him.

If we compare Sappho's poems with Anakreon's or the Sibyl's oracles with the prophet Bakis, then it is clear that the art of poetry or of prophecy is not one art practiced by men and another when practiced by women. It is the same. Can anyone protest this conclusion?

Anaxagoras is said to have predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake, one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall down to earth; and he said that none of the stars was in its original position; for being of stone, and heavy, their shining light is caused by friction with the revolving aether, and they are forced along in fixed orbits by the whirling impulse which gave them their circular motion, and this was what prevented them from falling to our earth in the first place, when cold and heavy bodies were separated from universal matter.

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

The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.

Általában úgy van az, a fáradságos munkát is könnyebben elviseljük, ha valaki szemmel láthatóan azon igyekszik, hogy megossza velünk: így a munkát nem érezzük reánk kényszerített fáradtságnak. A római katona akkor a legboldogabb, ha a hadvezér ugyanazt a kenyeret eszi, amit ő, közönséges tábori ágyon alszik, vele együtt ássa az árkot, veri be a cölöpöt, mikor sáncot készítenek. Nem is a kitüntetéseket vagy pénzjutalmakat osztogató tisztjeikért rajonganak kiváltképpen; azokat szeretik inkább, akik fáradalmakban és veszélyekben osztozkodnak velük. Az effajta tiszthez jobban ragaszkodnak, mint az olyan elnéző emberhez, aki nem bánja, ha könnyebben veszik a dolgot.

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:

These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.

three things must meet together, natural ability, theory, and practice. By theory I mean training, and by practice working at one's craft.

is to make them grow tall. For it contributes to height of stature when the vitality is not impeded and hindered by a mass of nourishment which forces it into thickness and width,

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther.

Whereas stories are fit for every place, reach to all persons, serve for all times, teach the living, revive the dead, so far excelling all other books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen’s lives, than to read it in Philosophers’ writings.