Plutarch Quotes
b. 120 Greece
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 – 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.
- Greece
- Historians
- Philosophers
Random Plutarch quote
116 quotes
A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
He preferred an honest man that wooed his daughter, before a rich man. "I would rather," said Themistocles, "have a man that wants money than money that wants a man."
Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.
* * * And holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me."
Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.
Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, "She can choose best," and so took both away with him.
Gorgias called tragedy a deception wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.
Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron."
When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I 'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living."
Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be,—a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?"
It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration,—nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.
Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars).
After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: "I came, I saw, I conquered."
Thamus … uttered with a loud voice his message, "The great Pan is dead."
Not Philip, but Philip's gold, took the cities of Greece.
A Traveler at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much."
"True," said he, "but every goose can."
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.
He [Cato] used to say that in all his life he never repented but of three things. The first was that he had trusted a woman with a secret; the second that he had gone by sea when he might have gone by land; and the third, that he had passed one day without having a will by him.
Fortune had so favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.
The wildest colts make the best horses.