Top 300 Plutarch Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “A healer of others, himself diseased.”

— Plutarch

102. “He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves.”

— Plutarch

103. “Either is both, and Both is neither.”

— Plutarch

104. “For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it.”

— Plutarch

105. “Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.”

— Plutarch

106. “The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.”

— Plutarch

107. “Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.”

— Plutarch

108. “Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war.”

— Plutarch

109. “Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers.”

— Plutarch

110. “Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.”

— Plutarch

111. “As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.”

— Plutarch

112. “A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.”

— Plutarch

113. “Since, during storms, flames leap from the humid vapors and dark clouds emit deafening noises, is it surprising the lightning, when it strikes the ground, gives rise to truffles, which do not resemble plants?”

— Plutarch

114. “It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension.”

— Plutarch

115. “These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade.”

— Plutarch

116. “The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.”

— Plutarch

117. “It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.”

— Plutarch

118. “To please the many is to displease the wise.”

— Plutarch

119. “Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.”

— Plutarch

120. “Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.”

— Plutarch

121. “Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself.”

— Plutarch

122. “The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.”

— Plutarch

123. “It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter.”

— Plutarch

124. “The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

126. “Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.”

— Plutarch

127. “Painting is silent poetry.”

— Plutarch

128. “Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation.”

— Plutarch

129. “The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

131. “Numa forbade the Romans to revere an image of God which had the form of man or beast. Nor was there among them in this earlier time any painted or graven likeness of Deity, 8 but while for the first hundred and seventy years they were continually building temples and establishing sacred shrines, they made no statues in bodily form for them, convinced that it was impious to liken higher things to lower, and that it was impossible to apprehend Deity except by the intellect.”

— Plutarch

132. “Whereas stories are fit for every place, reach to all persons, serve for all times, teach the living, revive the dead, so far excelling all other books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen’s lives, than to read it in Philosophers’ writings.”

— Plutarch

133. “Custom is almost a second nature.”

— Plutarch

134. “All beyond this is portentous and fabulous, inhabited by poets and mythologers, and there is nothing true or certain.”

— Plutarch

135. “Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.”

— Plutarch

136. “When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself.”

— Plutarch

137. “Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs.”

— Plutarch

138. “So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.”

— Plutarch

139. “Democritus said, words are but the shadows of actions.”

— Plutarch

140. “To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.”

— Plutarch

141. “It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief – the other contempt.”

— Plutarch

142. “Prosperity has this property; it puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and leads them to look down upon the world with contempt; but a truly noble spirit appears greatest in distress;.”

— Plutarch

143. “The wildest colts make the best horses.”

— Plutarch

144. “Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.”

— Plutarch

145. “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.”

— Plutarch

146. “A fool cannot hold his tongue.”

— Plutarch

147. “Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.”

— Plutarch

148. “In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.”

— Plutarch

149. “Pythagoras, when he was asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of this world.”

— Plutarch

150. “It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.”

— Plutarch