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“It is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions.”

Of those whom God is slow to punish
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.”

Life of Coriolanus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”

Of Fortune
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people,… he turned to his friend and said, "Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other?"”

55 Phocion
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

“An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice.”

Of those whom God is slow to punish
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Euripides was wont to say, "Silence is an answer to a wise man."”

Of Bashfulness
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“All men whilst they are awake are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Of Superstition.
Attributed to Heraclitus, Frag. 89
Moralia, Others

“He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Of Garrulity.
Attributed to Hesiod, Frag. 219
Moralia, Others

“Demosthenes told Phocion, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses."”

Life of Phocion
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.”

Of Garrulity
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.”

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

“We see that kindness or humanity has a larger field than bare justice to exercise itself in; law and justice we cannot, in the nature of things, employ on others than men; but we may extend our goodness and charity even to irrational creatures; and such acts flow from a gentle nature, as water from an abundant spring. It is doubtless the part of a kind-natured man to keep even worn-out horses and dogs, and not only take care of them when they are foals and whelps, but also when they are grown old.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Marcus Cato (Dryden translation)
Parallel Lives

“Custom is almost a second nature.”

Rules for the Preservation of Health, 18
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Menenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: "It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites."”

Life of Coriolanus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.”

Symposiacs, book viii. Question viii
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them. Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale.”

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

“A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic."”

Of Pausanias the Son of Phistoanax
Laconic Apophthegms

“Certainly the people's insistence that their candidates should present themselves ungirt and without a tunic had nothing to do with any suspicion of bribery, for it was not until long afterwards that the abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining the elections. Later on, however, this process of corruption spread to the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of the emperors. For it has rightly been said that the man who first offers banquets and bribes to the people is the first to destroy their liberties.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Gaius Marcius (Coriolanus) 14.2, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Makers of Rome: Nine Lives by Plutarch (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1965) ISBN 0140441581, p. 27
Parallel Lives