Top 300 Plutarch Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Basically, he used to say, the term cheap did not apply to something inessential: even if something cost only an as, you should regard it as something expensive if it was not something you needed- Cato the Elder.”

— Plutarch

302. “When someone asked Demaratus why the Spartans disgrace those who throw away their shields but not those who abandon their breastplates or helmets, he said that they put the latter on for their own sakes but the shield for the sake of the whole line.”

— Plutarch

303. “We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.”

— Plutarch

304. “Being human and investigating the affairs of the gods is an extreme version of being tone-deaf and talking about music, or having never served in the army and talking about warfare: we resemble amateurs trying to use arguments from probability based on opinions and conjecture to unearth the ideas of experts. Given.”

— Plutarch

305. “Even a nod from a person who is esteemed is of more force than a thousand arguments or studied sentences from others.”

— Plutarch

306. “Even those virtues which nature had denied him were imitated by him so successfully that he won more confidence than those who actually possessed them.”

— Plutarch

307. “Even if your life be bad do not live unknown, but be known, reform, repent; if you have virtue, be not utterly useless in life; if you are vicious, do not continue unreformed.”

— Plutarch

308. “Let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted.”

— Plutarch

309. “Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall.”

— Plutarch

310. “Remember what Simonides said, that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.”

— Plutarch

311. “He who cheats with an oath acknowledges that he is afraid of his enemy, but that he thinks little of God.”

— Plutarch

312. “For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made him resolute and firm in his opinions, and the boldness of his temper raised a sort of passion in him for surmounting difficulties; as if it were not enough to be always victorious in the field, unless places and seasons and nature herself submitted to him.”

— Plutarch

313. “Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.”

— Plutarch

314. “Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice, the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false display.”

— Plutarch

315. “So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men;.”

— Plutarch

316. “Come and take them.”

— Plutarch

317. “Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.”

— Plutarch

318. “It was for the most part by sacrifices, processions, and religious dances, which he himself appointed and conducted, and which mingled with their solemnity a diversion full of charm and a beneficent pleasure, that he won the people’s favour and tamed their fierce and warlike tempers. At times, also, by heralding to them vague terrors from the god, strange apparitions of divine beings and threatening voices, he would subdue and humble their minds by means of superstitious fears.”

— Plutarch

319. “Lycurgus was of opinion that ornaments were so far from advantaging them in their counsels, that they were rather an hindrance, by diverting their attention from the business before them to statues and pictures, and roofs curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places amongst the other Greeks.”

— Plutarch

320. “I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent than the extent of my power or possessions.”

— Plutarch

321. “Whilst he was very young, he was a soldier in the expedition against Potidaea, where Socrates lodged in the same tent with him, and stood next him in battle. Once there happened a sharp skirmish, in which they both behaved with signal bravery; but Alcibiades receiving a wound, Socrates threw himself before him to defend him, and beyond any question saved him and his arms from the enemy, and so in all justice might have challenged the prize of valor. But.”

— Plutarch

322. “For dealing with blessings which come to us from outside we need a firm foundation based on reason and education; without this foundation, people keep on seeking these blessings and heaping them up but can never satisfy the insatiable appetites of their souls.”

— Plutarch

323. “The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.”

— Plutarch

324. “For the first step towards victory undoubtedly is to gain courage.”

— Plutarch

325. “When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion.”

— Plutarch

326. “This vexed Theseus, and determining not to hold aloof, but to share the fortunes of the people, he came forward and offered himself without being drawn by lot. The people all admired his courage and patriotism, and Aegeus finding that his prayers and entreaties had no effect on his unalterable resolution, proceeded to choose the rest by lot.”

— Plutarch

327. “It was glorious to acquire a throne by justice, yet more glorious to prefer justice before a throne; the same virtue which made the one appear worthy of regal power exalted the other to the disregard of it.”

— Plutarch

328. “It is the fortune of all good men that their virtue rises in glory after their deaths, and that the envy which evil men conceive against them never outlives them long; some have the happiness even to see it die before them; but in Numa’s case, also, the fortunes of the succeeding kings served as foils to set off the brightness of his reputation.”

— Plutarch

329. “So they cut their hair short in front, that their enemies might not grasp it. And they say that Alexander of Macedon for the same reason ordered his generals to have the beards of the Macedonians shaved, because they were a convenient handle for the enemy to grasp.”

— Plutarch

330. “Thus it is that most people seem to suffer more from hard words than hard deeds, and are more excited by insult than by actual hurt. What we do to our enemies in war is done of necessity, but the evil we say of them seems to spring from an excess of spite.”

— Plutarch

331. “A man must have a less than ordinary share of sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate.”

— Plutarch

332. “Lycurgus, who ordered that a great piece of money should be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no discourse to be current which did not contain in few words a great deal of useful and curious sense.”

— Plutarch

333. “Small, therefore, can we think the progress we have made, as long as our admiration for those who have done noble things is barren, and does not of itself incite us to imitate them.”

— Plutarch

334. “For first, when Pompey made severe laws for punishing and laying great fines on those who had corrupted the people with gifts, Cato advised him to let alone what was already passed, and to provide for the future; for if he should look up past misdemeanors, it would be difficult to know where to stop; and if he would ordain new penalties, it would be unreasonable to punish men by a law, which at that time they had not the opportunity of breaking.”

— Plutarch

335. “Those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new think they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds.”

— Plutarch

336. “It is the hither accomplishment to use money well than to use arms; but not to need it is more noble than to use it.”

— Plutarch

337. “The very points of my character that are most commended mark me as unfit to reign: love of retirement and of studies inconsistent with business, a passion that has become inveterate in me for peace, for unwarlike occupations, and for the society of men whose meetings are but those of worship and of kindly intercourse, whose lives in general are spent upon their farms and their pastures.”

— Plutarch