Plutarch
Greek biographer and essayist, c. 46-c. 119
20 quotes.
Quotes by Plutarch
- Character is simply habit long continued.
- For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
- For water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
- God is the brave man's hope and not the coward's excuse.
- He can never speak well, who knows not how to hold his peace.
- It is well to go for a light to another man's fire, but by no means to tarry by it.
- Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
- Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.
- Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.
- Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed than one in adversity.
- Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
- Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
- Rest is the sweet sauce of labour.
- The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.
- The mind is not a vessel which calls for filling. It is a pile, which simply requires kindling-wood to start the flame of eagerness for original thought and ardour for truth.
- The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
- The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
- 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.
- To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
- To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.