521 Quotes by Plutarch

A lover’s soul lives in the body of his mistress.

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.

Books delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

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.

Nothing made the horse so fat as the king’s eye.

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.

Pittacus said, “Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only”.

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.

Themistocles replied that a man’s discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.