Top 350 Plutarch Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

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

— Plutarch

304. “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

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

— Plutarch

306. “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

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

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

309. “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

310. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

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

— Plutarch

317. “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

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

— Plutarch

319. “Come and take them.”

— Plutarch

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

— Plutarch

321. “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

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. “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

324. “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

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

— 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. “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

332. “Best rear no lion in your state, ’tis true; But treat him like a lion if you do.”

— Plutarch

333. “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

334. “In an harangue to the people, he said, with reference to these measures, that he had proscribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe them at some future time.”

— Plutarch

335. “Others have seen the assassination as a useful reminder of the futility of such attempts at direct action. For what did it achieve? If the assassins had really wanted to quash the rise of one-man rule in Rome, if they wanted to kill the tyranny as well as the tyrant, they were strikingly unsuccessful.”

— Plutarch

336. “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

337. “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

338. “As Plato says: ‘People cannot be good leaders, unless they have first been good servants.”

— Plutarch

339. “For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction.”

— Plutarch

340. “If we compare Sappho’s poems with Anakreon’s or the Sibyl’s oracles with the prophet Bakis, then it is clear that the art of poetry or of prophecy is not one art practiced by men and another when practiced by women. It is the same. Can anyone protest this conclusion?”

— Plutarch

341. “Whenever two notes are sounded in accord the tune is carried by the bass; and in like manner every activity in a virtuous household is carried on by both parties in agreement, but discloses the husband’s leadership and preferences.”

— Plutarch

342. “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

343. “For good natural parts are impaired by sloth; while inferior ability is mended by training: and while simple things escape the eyes of the careless, difficult things are reached by painstaking.”

— Plutarch

344. “There is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul, as man observed at birth, to whom alone, one might almost say, Nature has given not a clean passage to the light; but, defiled with blood and covered with filth, and resembling more one just slain than one just born, he is an object for none to touch or lift up or kiss or embrace except for someone who loves with a natural affection.”

— Plutarch

345. “But a man cannot by writing a bill of divorce to his vice get rid of all trouble at once, and enjoy tranquillity by living apart.”

— Plutarch

346. “For they either believe their colleagues to be their equals and so they fight against them; or they believe them to be superior and so they envy them; or they believe them inferior and so they despise them. We must, however, pay court to the colleague who is superior, make the inferior better, and honor the equal.”

— Plutarch

347. “For the Greek name for moral virtue is only habit: and if anyone defines moral virtues as habitual virtues, he will not be beside the mark.”

— Plutarch

348. “For humans it is not at all possible to have the best thing of all or to have any share of the best nature – since the best thing for all men and women is not to be born. But the second best thing after this and the first available to mortals, is to die as soon as possible after being born.” It is clear that he said this because the way that exists in death is better than the one in life.”

— Plutarch

349. “Another Spartan, when he saw men sitting on stools in a lavatory, declared: “May I never sit where it is impossible for me to get up and offer my seat to an older man.”

— Plutarch

350. “And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had inflicted upon others, justly suffering after the manner of their own injustice.”

— Plutarch