Plutarch (46–119): Greek biographer and essayist. The library holds 210 quotes by Plutarch, drawn from Of the Training of Children, Life of Themistocles, Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders. Philip and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Learn to be pleased with everything; with wealth so far as it makes us of benefit to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, “She can choose best,” and so took both away with him.
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.
Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, “Which would you rather be,—a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?”
Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, “My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour.”
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
He made one of Antipater’s recommendation a judge; and perceiving afterwards that his hair and beard were coloured, he removed him, saying, “I could not think one that was faithless in his hair could be trusty in his deeds.”
Leo Byzantius said, “What would you do, if you saw my wife, who scarce reaches up to my knees?… Yet,” went he on, “as little as we are, when we fall out with each other, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.”
After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. “Your advice,” said Cicero, “were good if we were to fight jackdaws.”
Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.
Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, “that,” said he, “the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me.”
What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man’s plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.
Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.
I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, “Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow.”
He preferred an honest man that wooed his daughter, before a rich man. “I would rather,” said Themistocles, “have a man that wants money than money that wants a man.”
As Athenodorus was taking his leave of Caesar, “Remember,” said he, “Caesar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself.”