"The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses."
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Quote collection
Plutarch quotes (page 14 of 20)
392 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit."
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"Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war."
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"I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice. …but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy."
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"Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well."
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"Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are"
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"Custom is almost a second nature."
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"Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless."
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"I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing."
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"He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good"
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"... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science."
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"Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm."
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"Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs."
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"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"
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"Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles."
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"Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous."
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"Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity."
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"Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy."
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"What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good."
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"Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature."
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