Plutarch Quotes

Quotes by and about Plutarch

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Plutarch: "When children are too saucy we must censure them and make them ashamed of themselves, and again encourage them by praise, and imitate those nurses who, when their children sob, give them the breast to comfort them. But we must not puff them up and make them conceited with excessive praise, for that will make them vain and give themselves airs."

Plutarch: "Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. ... No one ever yet repented of his silence, while multitudes have repented of their speaking. ... What has been once said can never be recalled."

Plutarch: "Virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practise and exercise: we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us."

Plutarch: "We must keep our sons from filthy language. For, as Democritus says, 'Language is the shadow of action.' They must also be taught to be affable and courteous [for] want of affability is justly hateful."

Plutarch: "My heart is not hard as oak or flintstone."

Plutarch: "[An] idea that deceives the mass of mankind [is] that if they could live in big houses, and get together a quantity of slaves and money, they would have a happy life. But a happy and cheerful life is not from without, on the contrary, a man adds the pleasure and gratification to the things that surround him, his temperament being as it were the source of his feelings.

Plutarch: "By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy."