Top 300 Plutarch Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Books delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.”

— Plutarch

152. “The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it.”

— Plutarch

153. “What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man’s plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.”

— Plutarch

154. “Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.”

— Plutarch

155. “Beauty is the flower of virtue.”

— Plutarch

156. “A traveller 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.””

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

158. “The flatterer’s object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best.”

— Plutarch

159. “There is no stronger test of a person’s character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.”

— Plutarch

160. “If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.”

— Plutarch

161. “Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.”

— Plutarch

162. “What All The World Knows Water is the principle, or the element, of things. All things are water.”

— Plutarch

163. “For man is a plant, not fixed in the earth, nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising as it were from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven.”

— Plutarch

164. “Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.”

— Plutarch

165. “Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.”

— Plutarch

166. “Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades.”

— Plutarch

167. “Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice.”

— Plutarch

168. “As small letters hurt the sight, so do small matters him that is too much intent upon them; they vex and stir up anger, which begets an evil habit in him in reference to greater affairs.”

— Plutarch

169. “We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.”

— Plutarch

170. “Words will build no walls.”

— Plutarch

171. “The belly has no ears.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

173. “He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.”

— Plutarch

174. “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.”

— Plutarch

175. “The first evil those who are prone to talk suffer, is that they hear nothing.”

— Plutarch

176. “Philosophy is an act of living.”

— Plutarch

177. “Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.”

— Plutarch

178. “The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants.”

— Plutarch

179. “Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.”

— Plutarch

180. “In fact Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to obey a wife’s authority, for by the time he met her he had already been quite broken in and schooled to accept the way of women.”

— Plutarch

181. “Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun.”

— Plutarch

182. “Archimedes had stated, that given the force, any given weight might be moved; and even boasted that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this.”

— Plutarch

183. “The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of superstition.”

— Plutarch

184. “It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.”

— Plutarch

185. “Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures.”

— Plutarch

186. “Time is the wisest of all counselors.”

— Plutarch

187. “But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country’s interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.”

— Plutarch

188. “As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them.”

— Plutarch

189. “To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature.”

— Plutarch

190. “And it is said that extraordinary rains generally dash down after great battles, whether it is that some divine power drenches and hallows the ground with purifying waters from Heaven, or that the blood and putrefying matter send up a moist and heavy vapour which condenses the air, this being easily moved and readily changed to the highest degree by the slightest cause.”

— Plutarch

191. “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. EOQ.”

— Plutarch

192. “The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.”

— Plutarch

193. “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.”

— Plutarch

194. “Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them.”

— Plutarch

195. “Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.”

— Plutarch

196. “When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.”

— Plutarch

197. “He who reflects on another man’s want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself.”

— Plutarch

198. “It is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper.”

— Plutarch

199. “Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm? Is it that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves?”

— Plutarch

200. “He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.”

— Plutarch