Top 300 Plutarch Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does.”

— Plutarch

252. “Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by – or rather, things that are.”

— Plutarch

253. “Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous.”

— Plutarch

254. “The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater.”

— Plutarch

255. “Though others before him had triumphed three times, Pompeius, by having gained his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and this the last over Asia, seemed in a manner to have brought the whole world into his three triumphs.”

— Plutarch

256. “The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a bridle.”

— Plutarch

257. “Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.”

— Plutarch

258. “Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.”

— Plutarch

259. “Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.”

— Plutarch

260. “A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need.”

— Plutarch

261. “Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man.”

— Plutarch

262. “If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect.”

— Plutarch

263. “Pittacus said, “Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only”.”

— Plutarch

264. “For though all persons are equally subject to the caprice of fortune, yet all good men have one advantage she cannot deny, which is this, to act reasonably under misfortunes.”

— Plutarch

265. “If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business.”

— Plutarch

266. “The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.”

— Plutarch

267. “The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration.”

— Plutarch

268. “They insist upon the shaving of the moustache, I think, in order that they may accustom the young men to obedience in the most trifling matters.”

— Plutarch

269. “Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one’s own praises.”

— Plutarch

270. “Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.”

— Plutarch

271. “So it happens in political affairs; if the motions of rulers be constantly opposite and cross to the tempers and inclination of the people, they will be resented as arbitrary and harsh; as, on the other side, too much deference, or encouragement, as too often it has been, to popular faults and errors, is full of danger and ruinous consequences.”

— Plutarch

272. “Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof.”

— Plutarch

273. “Thus ambitious spirits in a commonwealth, when they transgress their bounds, are apt to do more harm than good.”

— Plutarch

274. “He shall fare well who confronts circumstances aright.”

— Plutarch

275. “Once being hard pressed in wrestling, and fearing to be thrown, he got the hand of his antagonist to his mouth, and bit it with all his force; and when the other loosed his hold presently, and said, “You bite, Alcibiades, like a woman.” “No,” replied he, “like a lion.” Another.”

— Plutarch

276. “I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.”

— Plutarch

277. “Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.”

— Plutarch

278. “Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit.”

— Plutarch

279. “There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it.”

— Plutarch

280. “Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.”

— Plutarch

281. “What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.”

— Plutarch

282. “Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.”

— Plutarch

283. “Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man’s self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger.”

— Plutarch

284. “That which is chiefly the office of a general, to force the enemy into fighting when he finds himself the stronger, and to avoid being driven into it himself when he is the weaker...”

— Plutarch

285. “Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature.”

— Plutarch

286. “Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.”

— Plutarch

287. “When a man’s eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.”

— Plutarch

288. “To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice.”

— Plutarch

289. “God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine.”

— Plutarch

290. “A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself.”

— Plutarch

291. “I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician.”

— Plutarch

292. “Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say.”

— Plutarch

293. “For kings indeed we have, who wear the marks and assume the titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their subjects.”

— Plutarch

294. “To make an action honorable, it ought to be agreeable to the age, and other circumstances of the person; since it is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.”

— Plutarch

295. “So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us.”

— Plutarch

296. “It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. Or if, on the other hand, events are limited to the combinations of some finite number, then of necessity the same must often recur, and in the same sequence.”

— Plutarch

297. “The authors of great evils know best how to remove them.”

— Plutarch

298. “The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.”

— Plutarch

299. “While in the case of his iron money, as I have explained, Lycurgus arranged for heavy weight to be matched by low value, he did the opposite for the currency of speech. Here he developed the technique of expressing a wide range of ideas in just a few, spare words.”

— Plutarch

300. “Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.”

— Plutarch