Plutarch: Quotes about men

Plutarch was ancient Greek historian and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on men.
Plutarch: 502 quotes14 likes

“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.”

Plutarch

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.”

Plutarch

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

“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.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Marcus Cato, sec. 19
Parallel Lives

“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.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Marcus Cato, sec. 4
Parallel Lives

“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.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Demosthenes, sec. 16
Parallel Lives

“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.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Aemilius, sec. 27
Parallel Lives

“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.”

Plutarch book Moralia

II, 4
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh

“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.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Source: Moralia, How one may be aware of one's progress in virtue, XV