521 Quotes by Plutarch

The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.

Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.

Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.

Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy.

Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.

God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine.

Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.

We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.

Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.