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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Plutarch

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Plutarch

[Greek]—A dead man doesn’t bite.

[Greek]—Calling a fig a fig, and a spade a spade.

[Greek]—Character is simply prolonged habit.

A constant friend is a thing hard and rare to find.

Cæsar’s wife should be above suspicion.

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Distressed valour challenges great respect, even from enemies.

In civil broils the worst of men may rise to honour.

It is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.

It is well to go for a light to another man’s fire, but by no means to tarry by it.

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.

Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete.

None of you can tell where the shoe pinches me.

Rest is the sweet sauce of labour.

Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

The first evil those suffer who are fain to talk is that they hear nothing.

The greater proportion of mankind are more sensitive to contemptuous language than unjust acts; for they can less easily bear insult than wrong.

There is no stronger test of a man’s real character than power and authority, exciting, as they do, every passion, and discovering every latent vice.

Valour in distress challenges respect, even from an enemy.

Virtue, like a strong and hardy plant, will root when it can find an ingenuous nature and a mind not averse to labour.

When the strong box contains no more,… / Both friends and flatterers shun the door.