Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Plutarch (Greek Biographer)

Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE,) later Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and moralist. One of the most influential writers ever, his works strongly influenced the evolution of the essay, the biography, and historical writing in Europe from the 16th to the 19th century.

Born in Chaeroneia in the Greek region of Boeotia, Plutarch spent most of his later life there. He studied philosophy in Athens and voyaged to Italy and Egypt, making a circle of distinguished friends. He possibly visited Rome, where he gave public lectures in philosophy.

Among Plutarch’s 227 works, the most important is the Bioi parallēloi (‘Parallel Lives,’) in which he recounts the noble deeds and characters of Greek and Roman soldiers, legislators, orators, and diplomats. Plutarch was very much concerned with men’s moral conduct and individual moral guidance in an age when men were losing their faith in religion and philosophy.

Plutarch also wrote the Moralia, or Ethica, a series of more than 83 treatises on diverse subjects such as vegetarianism, superstition, philosophy (Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic,) dietetics, divine justice, prophecy, demonology, conjugal relations, family life, mysticism, and numerous helpful precepts.

Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature as the foremost encyclopedist of antiquity. Sir Thomas North’s translation into English of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives was a primary source used by William Shakespeare for several of his Roman plays.

Ironically, Plutarch, who was the biographer of many others, had no biographer except for a scant remark in Suidas, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. Prominent modern biographies include Donald Russell’s Plutarch (1973,) C P Jones’s Plutarch and Rome (1971,) and Reginald Barrow’s Plutarch and His Times (1967.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Plutarch

If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a burr, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business.
Plutarch
Topics: Talking

It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration—nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.
Plutarch
Topics: Criticism

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.
Plutarch

When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, “I knew he was mortal.” So we in all casualties of life should say, “I knew my riches were uncertain, that my friend was but a man.” Such considerations would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected.
Plutarch
Topics: Trouble

He can never speak well, who knows not how to hold his peace.
Plutarch
Topics: Silence

Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall.
Plutarch
Topics: Intelligence

The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.
Plutarch
Topics: Wine, Honor

Time is the wisest of all counselors.
Plutarch
Topics: Time, Time Management

No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.
Plutarch
Topics: Luck, Fortune, Fate

To find fault, is easy; to do better may be difficult.
Plutarch
Topics: Difficulty, Blame, Faults

Every condition of life, if attended with virtue, is undisturbed and delightful; but when vice is intermixed, it renders even things that appear sumptuous and magnificent, distasteful and uneasy to the possessor.
Plutarch
Topics: Virtue

The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth.
Plutarch
Topics: Education, Thought, Mind, Intelligence

The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking.—And the first evil that attends those who know not how to be silent, is, that they hear nothing.
Plutarch
Topics: Talking

Someone praising a man for his foolhardy bravery, Cato, the elder, said, “There is a wide difference between true courage and a mere contempt of life.”
Plutarch
Topics: Praise

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
Plutarch
Topics: Respect, Respectability, Nature

Those who are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
Plutarch
Topics: Praise

The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.
Plutarch
Topics: The Present

Talkative people who wish to be loved are hated; when they desire to please, they bore; when they think they are admired, they are laughed at; they injure their friends, benefit their enemies, and ruin themselves.
Plutarch
Topics: Talking

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.
Plutarch
Topics: Politics

The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart.
Plutarch
Topics: God, Thankfulness

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.
Plutarch
Topics: Glory

Neither blame or praise yourself.
Plutarch
Topics: Blame

As small letters hurt the sight, so do small matters him that is too much intent upon them: they vex and stir up anger, which begets an evil habit in him in reference to greater affairs.
Plutarch
Topics: Misery

It was a shrewd saying, whoever said it, “That the man who first brought ruin on the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.”
Plutarch
Topics: Luxury

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
Plutarch
Topics: Conversation, Listening, Profit

It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension.
Plutarch
Topics: Praise

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
Plutarch
Topics: Fate

Some one praising a man for his fool hardy bravery, Cato, the elder, said, “There is a wide difference between true courage and a mere contempt of life.”
Plutarch
Topics: Bravery

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.
Plutarch
Topics: Courage, Bravery

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?
Plutarch
Topics: Vegetarianism

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