Top 300 Plutarch Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.”

— Plutarch

152. “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

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

155. “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

156. “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

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

— Plutarch

158. “Painting is silent poetry.”

— Plutarch

159. “One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

162. “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

163. “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

164. “As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity.”

— Plutarch

165. “He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

167. “By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

169. “The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy.”

— Plutarch

170. “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

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

— Plutarch

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Plutarch

175. “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

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

178. “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

179. “Beauty is the flower of virtue.”

— Plutarch

180. “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

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

— Plutarch

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

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

— Plutarch

186. “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

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

189. “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

190. “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

191. “The belly has no ears.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

194. “Philosophy is an act of living.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

197. “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

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

— Plutarch

199. “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

200. “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