Quotes from Plutarch

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

Being consulted again whether it were requisite to enclose the city with a wall, [Lycurgus] sent them word, 'The city is well fortified which hath a wall of men instead of brick'.

Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, 'He, Sir, that is the least like you'.

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.

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.

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.

Whereas stories are fit for every place, reach to all persons, serve for all times, teach the living, revive the dead, so far excelling all other books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen's lives, than to read it in Philosophers' writings.

The Spartans] should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.

The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations.

By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy.

Numa forbade the Romans to revere an image of God which had the form of man or beast. Nor was there among them in this earlier time any painted or graven likeness of Deity, 8 but while for the first hundred and seventy years they were continually building temples and establishing sacred shrines, they made no statues in bodily form for them, convinced that it was impious to liken higher things to lower, and that it was impossible to apprehend Deity except by the intellect.

Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

For lack of rules (which the undisciplined sector of the young call freedom) sets masters over one which are more tyrannical than the teachers and trainers familiar from childhood – these masters are the desires, when they have broken out of prison, so to speak.

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...

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.

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.

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

Åžayet yaÅŸam ya da düÅŸünme tarz?nda yüksek standartlara ulaÅŸam?yorsak, bu vatan?m?z?n küçüklüÄŸüyle deÄŸil, kiÅŸisel yetersizlikle alakal?d?r.

They died,but not as lavish as their blood, Or thinking death itself was simply good; Their wishes neither were to live nor die, But to do both alike commendably.

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.

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.

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.

They should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man.

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.