Quote collection
392 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"The belly has no ears."
"The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting."
"Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
"We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful."
"The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart."
"For man is a plant, not fixed in the earth, nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising as it were from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven."
"Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord."
"But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence."
"To fail to do good is as bad as doing harm."
"Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers."
"Grief is like a physical pain which must be allowed to subside somewhat on its own before medical treatment is applied."
"As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture."
"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."
"The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes."
"Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly."
"Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty."
"Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow Souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and look down upon the World with Contempt; but a truly noble and resolved Spirit appears greatest in Distress, and then becomes more bright and conspicuous."
"Learn to be pleased with everything...because it could always be worse, but isn't!"
"I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is."