Plutarch Quotes

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“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."”

“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.”

“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.”

“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."”

“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.”

“Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."”

“Pompey had fought brilliantly and in the end routed Caesar's whole force… but either he was unable to or else he feared to push on. Caesar [said] to his friends: 'Today the enemy would have won, if they had had a commander who was a winner.”

“Like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead.”

“The great god Pan is dead.”

“For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.”

“According to the proverb, the best things are the most difficult.”

“The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.”

“Indeed, to imagine that one has already arrived at perfection, argues self-conceit rather than true greatness of character.”

“Now, king of the Lacedæmonians, take care when we come out that no one sees us weeping or doing anything unworthy of Sparta. This lies in our own power; but good or evil fortune befalls us according to the will of Heaven.”

“Perish those who suspect those men of doing or enduring anything base.”

“He has glorified himself by recording that when men were detected in any fault, they would excuse themselves by saying that they must be pardoned if they did anything amiss, for they were not Catos: and that those who endeavoured clumsily to imitate his proceedings were called left-handed Catos.”

“With all this he showed himself so affable and simple to those under his rule, so severe and inexorable in the administration of justice, and so vigilant and careful in seeing that his orders were duly executed, that the government of Rome never was more feared or more loved in Sardinia than when he governed that island.”

“Cleverness of speech was a quality which nearly all the young men of the time sought to attain, but Cato was singular in his keeping up the severe traditions of his ancestors in labouring with his own hands, eating a simple dinner, lighting no fire to cook his breakfast, wearing a plain dress, living in a mean house, and neither coveting superfluities nor courting their possessors.”

“Hence, when these men praised Philip as being more eloquent, more handsome, and to crown all, able to drink more than any one else, Demosthenes sneeringly replied that the first of these qualities was excellent in a sophist, the second in a woman, and the third in a sponge, but that they were none of them such as became a king.”

“Yet, as the strongest bodies are those which can equally well support the extremes of heat and cold, so the noblest minds are those which prosperity does not render insolent and overbearing, nor ill fortune depress: and here Aemilius appears more nearly to approach absolute perfection, as, when in great misfortune and grief for his children, he showed the same dignity and firmness as after the greatest success.”

“He said, that he never had feared what man could do to him, but always had feared Fortune, the most fickle and variable of all deities; and in the late war she had been so constantly present with him, like a favouring gale, that he expected now to meet with some reverse by way of retribution.”

“You, young men, be sure that you lay aside your haughty looks and vainglory in your victory, and await with humility what the future may bring forth, ever considering what form of retribution Heaven may have in store for us to set off against our present good fortune.”

“In the beginning, some wild and mischievous beast was killed and eaten, and then some little bird or fish was entrapped. And the love of slaughter, being first experimented and exercised in these, at last passed even to the laboring ox, and the sheep that clothes us, and to the poor cock that keeps the house; until by little and little, unsatiableness being strengthened by use, men came to the slaughter of men, to bloodshed and wars.”

“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. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them.”

“Such men ever, whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and repress any ignoble passion.”

“Impossible questions require impossible answers.”

“...they perceived that no beginnings should be considered too small to be capable of quickly becoming great by uninterrupted endurance and having no obstacle to their growth by reason of being despised.”

“Dost thou, fair Sikyon, hesitate to raise
A fitting tomb to thy lost hero's praise?
Curst be the land, nay, curst the air or wave
That grudges room for thy Aratus' grave.”

“A dead man does not bite.”

“Twas not that life or death itself was good,
That these heroic spirits shed their blood:
This was their aim, and this their latest cry,
'Let us preserve our honour, live or die.'”

“Far from the battle, on that fatal day
Beside Thermodon may I flee away,
Or view it as an eagle from the sky;
There shall the vanquished weep, the victor die.”

“But for my own part I believe that for the enjoyment of true happiness, which depends chiefly upon a man's character and disposition, it makes no difference whether he be born in an obscure state or of an ill-favoured mother, or not.”

“I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power.”

“But those who are careless of accuracy in small things soon begin to neglect the most important.”

“The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”