Plutarch Quotes

All beyond this is portentous and fabulous, inhabited by poets and mythologers, and there is nothing true or certain.

"Such contentedness and change of view in regard to every kind of life does the infusion of reason bring about. When Alexander heard from Anaxarchus of the infinite number of worlds, he wept, and when his friends asked him what was the matter, he replied, "Is it not a matter for tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, I have not conquered one?

It is certainly our duty to avoid all appearance of evil, and to be ashamed to give occasion even to be reputed vicious; yet evil reports are so inconsiderable to a wise man, that, if he have a greater aversion to the nature of evil than to the infamy that attends it, he will not fear what is said of him abroad, nor what calumnies are raised, if so be he be made the better by them. It was handsomely said of Diogenes, when he saw a young spark coming out of a tavern, who at the sight of him drew back: Do not retire, says he, for the more you go backward, the more you will be in the tavern. Even so every vicious person, the more he denies and palliates vice, the more aggravates and confirms it, and with surer footing goes farther into wickedness; like some persons of ordinary rank and quality, who, while they assume above themselves, and out of arrogance would be thought rich, are made really poor and necessitous, by pretending to be otherwise.

Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be,—a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?"

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

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

So hard is it to discover the truth, because the history of past ages is rendered difficult by the lapse of time; while in contemporary history the truth is always obscured, either by private spite and hatred, or by a desire to curry favour with the chief men of the time.

I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.

those who were getting so much money from Caesar urged the senate to give him money as if he had none, nay rather, they forced it to do so, though it groaned over its own decrees.

A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself.

And that which is often said of the volume and power of the human voice was then apparent to the eye. For ravens which chanced to be flying overhead fell down into the stadium. The cause of this was the rupture of the air; for when the voice is borne aloft loud and strong, the air is rent asunder by it and will not support flying creatures, but lets them fall, as if they were over a vacuum, unless, indeed, they are transfixed by a sort of blow, as of a weapon, and fall down dead. It is possible, too, that in such cases there is a whirling motion of the air, which becomes like a waterspout at sea with a refluent flow of the surges caused by their very volume.

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.

When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.

Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, "She can choose best," and so took both away with him.

Friends and kindred should be the good and virtuous [of all mankind], and that the vicious only should be accounted foreigners. Nor ... Greeks and barbarians should be distinguished by long garments, targets, scimitars, or turbans; but that the Grecians should be known by their virtue and courage, and the barbarians by their vices and their cowardice.