Quotes from Plutarch

A sage thing is timely silence, and better than any speech

The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart.

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

Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease; and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.

The first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who first gave them bounties and largess

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits

The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.

Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less.

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.

No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.

Antiphanes said merrily that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible; so that the words spoken in winter were articulated next summer.

It is wise to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.

A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me."

I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions.

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

The great god Pan is dead.

Like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead.

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.

An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.