Quotes from Plutarch

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage

I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.

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.

It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.

When someone blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his vindication 'He who knows how to speak, knows also when'.

A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.

Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty.

Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and gives them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune...

When asked by a woman from Attica:'Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?', she said: 'Because we are the only ones who give birth to men.

For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.

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;

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.

But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.

The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.

The Spartans] ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of childbearing.

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.

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

take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful.

when he was ædile, he provided such a number of gladiators, that he entertained the people with three hundred and twenty single combats, and by his great liberality and magnificence in theatrical shows, in processions, and public feastings, he threw into the shade all the attempts that had been made before him, and gained so much upon the people, that every one was eager to find out new offices and new honors for him in return for his munificence.

It was natural for [Spartan women] to think and speak as Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done, when some foreign lady, as it would seem, told her that the women of Lacedaemon were the only women of the world who could rule men; 'With good reason,' she said, 'for we are the only women who bring forth men'.