Plutarch: Quotes about men

“Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things."”

“The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.”

Of the Love of Wealth
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.”

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

“To sing the same tune, as the saying is, is in everything cloying and offensive; but men are generally pleased with variety.”

Lysander, sec. 17
Parallel Lives

“Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.”

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“Cato said, "I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is."”

Cæsar Augustus
Roman Apophthegms

“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.”

Political Precepts
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.”

Consolation to Apollonius

“And it is said that when he took his seat for the first time under the golden canopy on the royal throne, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-meaning man and a friend of Alexander's, as he had been of Alexander's father, burst into tears, as old men will, and declared that those Hellenes were deprived of great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius.”

Demosthenes and Cicero, sec. 3
Parallel Lives

“Socrates said, "Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live."”

Alexander, 37, 7 (Loeb)
Parallel Lives

“When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.”

How a Young Man ought to hear Poems, 4
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.”

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.”

Against Colotes
Moralia, Others

“Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.”

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

“When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."”

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

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

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

“Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.”

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

“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.”

Cicero
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.”

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