Quotes from Plutarch

Their [Lacadaemonian] women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses, giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking openly even on the most important subjects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery

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.

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.

in which he reigned; a certain writer called Clodius, in a book

Over time events trickle out of the minds of forgetful, thoughtless people, and so, since they retain and conserve nothing, the empty space within them, that should be filled with good things, is filled instead with hopes, so that they neglect the present and look to the future, despite the fact that fortune may yet foil the future, whereas the present cannot be taken away.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

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

page 212: let me be far from the battle at Thermodon Watching if from high in the clouds, like an eagle. The vanquished weep, and the victor has perished.

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.

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.

Both stand charged with the rape of women; neither of them could avoid domestic misfortunes nor jealousy at home; but towards the close of their lives are both of them said to have incurred great odium with their countrymen, if, that is, we may take the stories least like poetry as our guide to the truth.

And it is said that extraordinary rains generally dash down after great battles, whether it is that some divine power drenches and hallows the ground with purifying waters from Heaven, or that the blood and putrefying matter send up a moist and heavy vapour which condenses the air, this being easily moved and readily changed to the highest degree by the slightest cause.

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.

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

we ought not to let either our joy at their faults or our grief at their success be idle, but in either case we ought to reflect, how we may become better than them by avoiding their errors, and by imitating their virtues not come short of them.

is to make them grow tall. For it contributes to height of stature when the vitality is not impeded and hindered by a mass of nourishment which forces it into thickness and width

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

Education and study, and the favours of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.