Plutarch Quotes

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Nothing is so naturally haughty and harsh and hard to govern as a man who has acquired a reputation for success.

Your sons should be kept away from bad language for the word is the shadow of the deed.

Neither blame or praise yourself.

Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

Character is simply habit long continued.

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

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

Envy attacks the beginner as it were at the door of office and does not give him entrance.

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and 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? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

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

Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

If we miss contentment, then that is often our own fault—and the fault not of our bodies but of our souls.