Plutarch 46-120 A.D.

Source: Plutarch. Moralia. Loeb Classical Library. 14 vols.

Courtesy of translator Giles Laurén, author of The Stoic's Bible.

Plutarch Moralia Quotes, Page: I | II | III | IV

The Thirii forbade lampooning on the comic stage all citizens but the adulterers and busybodies.
PL MOR 6. P495.

Adultery seems to be a sort of curiosity about another’s pleasure; an encroaching, debauching and denuding of secret things.

PL MOR 6. P495.

A natural consequence of much learning is to have much to say (and for this reason Pythagoras enjoined a 'Truce to Speech' for five years), a necessary concomitant of inquisitiveness is to speak evil. For what the curious delight to hear they delight to tell and what they zealously collect from others they joyously reveal to everyone else. Consequently, their disease impedes the fulfilment of their desires, for everyone is on his guard to hide things from them.
PL MOR 6. P495.

To pass by so many free women who are public property, open to all, and then to be draw toward a woman who is kept under lock and key, who is expensive and often quite ugly, is the very height of madness and insanity.
PL MOR 6. P497.

Let those who are curious about life’s failures remind themselves that their former discoveries have brought them no favour or profit.
PL MOR 6. P501.

Where are all the bad people buried? Where indeed? A cynic on epitaphs.
PL MOR 6. P503.

Men have built their temples to the Muses far from cities and they call night kindly from a belief that its quiet is conducive to investigation of problems.

PL MOR 6. P507.

When a crowd is running to see something or other it is not difficult to remain seated or get up and go away. You will surely reap no benefit from mixing with busybodies and you will be better for turning to reason.
PL MOR 6. P507.

Those who make most use of the intellect make fewest calls upon the senses.
PL MOR 6. P507.

You may sometimes forgo an honest profit to accustom yourself to keep clear of dishonest profit. Likewise you may sometimes not hear things that concern you to avoid hearing what does not concern you.
PL MOR 6. P511.

Informers search to see whether anyone has planned or committed a misdemeanour; busybodies investigate and make public even the involuntary mischances of their neighbours.
PL MOR 6. P515.

Many cases can be cited of men who would rather be rich though miserable than become happy by paying money. Money cannot buy peace of mind, greatness of spirit, serenity, confidence, and self sufficiency.
PL MOR 7. P7.

Having wealth is not the same as being superior to it, nor is possessing luxuries the same as feeling no need for them. From what ills then does wealth deliver us if it does not even deliver us from the craving for it?
PL MOR 7. P9.

Drink allays the desire for drink and food is the remedy for hunger, but neither silver nor gold allays the craving for money nor does greed of gain ever cease from acquiring new gains.
PL MOR 7. P9.

In what suffices no one is poor.
PL MOR 7. P9.

If a man eats and drinks a great deal and is never filled, he sees a physician for a cure. When a man with lands and money in plenty is not satisfied but loses sleep to gain more, does he imagine he needs someone to prescribe a cure for him?
PL MOR 7. P11.

His ailment is not poverty, but the insatiability and avarice arising from false and unreflecting judgement.
PL MOR 7. P13.

See the man absorbed in money getting, moaning over his expenditures and sticking at nothing that brings him money though he has houses, land and slaves. What are we to call his trouble but mental poverty? Poverty in money is a thing from which the bounty of a single friend can deliver a man, as Menander says, but poverty of the mind is beyond deliverance by all his friends together.
PL MOR 7. P15.

For men of sense natural wealth has a limit drawn around it as by a compass and this limit we call utility.
PL MOR 7. P15.

Another peculiarity of the love of money is that it is a desire that opposes its own satisfaction; all other desires aid in their satisfaction. No one abstains from food because he is weak, nor wine because he is fond of it, yet men abstain from using money because they love it.
PL MOR 7. P15.

How can it be called anything but madness when a man refuses to use his cloak when he is cold, to eat because he is hungry or to use his wealth because he loves it?
PL MOR 7. P17.

Where failing pleasures lead to failing desires all is well, but it is otherwise with avarice that compels us to make money and forbids us to use it.
PL MOR 7. P19.

The avarice of the ant leads to hoarding, whereas the avarice of the beast of prey runs to legal blackmail, pursuit of legacies, cheating, intrigue and scheming.
PL MOR 7. P21.

Vipers, blister beetles and venomous spiders offend and disgust us more than lions and bears because they kill and destroy men without using what they destroy; so too, rapacious men who acquire wealth by fraud, meanness and illiberality disgust us more than those who gain it by labour since the miserly take from others what they cannot use themselves.
PL MOR 7. P23.

Misers are like the mice that eat gold dust in the mines; the gold cannot be had until they are dead and laid open.
PL MOR 7. P23.

By the means whereby they train their children, misers ruin them by warping their characters and implanting avarice and meanness like a vault to guard the inheritance.
PL MOR 7. P25.

Get profit, be sparing, and count yourself worth no more than what you have: this is not to educate a son, but to compress him and sew him shut like a money bag that he may hold tight and keep safe what you have put in.
PL MOR 7. P25.

The worst member of the family consumes the property of all. Proverb.
PL MOR 7. P25.

The sons of the wealthy pay for their lessons in the appropriate coin, they do not love their fathers for the wealth they are to inherit, but rather hate them for not having passed it on already. Having been taught to admire only wealth and live for nothing but great possessions, they consider that their fathers’ lives stand in the way of their own and conceive that time steals from them whatever it adds to their fathers’ years.
PL MOR 7. P27.

When at his father’s death the son takes over the keys and seals, his way of life is altered and his countenance becomes unsmiling, stern, and forbidding. Here is an end of ball playing, of the Academy and the Lyceum. Instead there is the interrogation of servants, inspection of ledgers, the casting of accounts with stewards and debtors and occupation and worry that deny him his luncheon and drive him to the bath at night.
PL MOR 7. P27.

Poor soul! What has your father left to compare with what he has taken away, your leisure and your freedom? It is your wealth that is overwhelming you, that brings on the premature wrinkles and grey hairs and the cares of avarice whereby all levity, keenness and friendliness are blighted.
PL MOR 7. P29.

The first miser gets no good from his wealth and to those who follow it brings only harm and disgrace.
PL MOR 7. P29.

Be careful or you will be like one who gives his approval to a pageant or a festival rather than to the business of living.
PL MOR 7. P33.

With no one to see or admire wealth it becomes sightless and bereft of radiance. When the rich man dines alone he leaves his golden beakers in the cupboard and uses common furnishings, thus confessing that wealth is for others.
PL MOR 7. P37.

The shameless feel no pain in doing what is base, whereas the compliant are dismayed by any semblance of baseness; compliancy is an excess of shame.
PL MOR 7. P47.

Eliminate all excess apprehension at the prospect of censure. Many instances are found of men who played the coward in the good fight from not having the firmness to submit to ill fame.
PL MOR 7. P49.

Do not let your enemy embarrass you when he appears to trust you, for fear that the mistrust that was your preservation lose its keen edge under the influence of shame.
PL MOR 7. P59.

When a man drinks to you at dinner after you have had your fill, do not yield or force yourself to comply, but set your cup down. Another invites you to throw dice over wine, do not let his scoffing daunt you. A bore lays hold of you, break his hold and complete what you have to do. In such escapes as these we practice firmness at the cost of but slight dissatisfaction.
PL MOR 7. P59.

We often pass over honest men, kinsmen and those in need and confer our gifts on others who are persistent and pressing in their demands, not because we consent to make the gifts, but because we are too weak to refuse.
PL MOR 7. P63.

No one who has spent what he has on what he should not will be able to spend what he has not on what he should. Demosthenes.
PL MOR 7. P65.

Passions and disorders involve us in what we wish to avoid: ambition leads to disgrace; love of pleasure to pain, indolence to toil, contentiousness to discomfiture and defeat at law. Compliancy in its dread of getting a bad name escapes the smoke and falls into the fire. When men are too embarrassed to refuse unreasonable petitioners they must later incur the embarrassment of just reproaches.
PL MOR 7. P67.

Euripides asserts that silence is an answer to the wise, yet we are more likely to need it in dealing with the inconsiderate since reasonable men are open to persuasion.
PL MOR 7. P69.

Many who start by waiving security for fear of giving offence later go to law for payment and lose their friend.
PL MOR 7. P71.

In facile compliance more than any other disorder, regret does not follow the act, but is present from the first. When we give we chafe; when we agree we are ashamed; when we act as partners we are disgraced; when we fail to act the sorry truth comes out. Being too weak to refuse we promise what is beyond our powers.
PL MOR 7. P73.

There is no embarrassment in not being omnipotent; to undertake services beyond our abilities is both ignominious and mortifying.
PL MOR 7. P75.

We must render reasonable and proper services gladly to those who ask for them, not from helpless submission, but because we choose to.
PL MOR 7. P75.

It is no discord of measure and music that sets city against city and friend against friend, leading them to conflict and calamity; it is jarring errors in law and injustice. Plato. Clitophonm. 407.
PL MOR 7. P79.

Umpires who cheat at games and officials who make corrupt appointments lose their honour and reputation.
PL MOR 7. P83.

We must make a bold front on both sides and yield to neither flattery nor intimidation.
PL MOR 7. P85.

Since the avoidance of all reproach is impossible, we do better to incur the wrath of the inconsiderate rather than those who have a just claim if we do injustice.
PL MOR 7. P85.

He who gives ear to flatterers is no wiser than he who gives a leg hold to one who would throw him.
PL MOR 7. P85.

Hate arises from the notion that the hated person is bad, either in general or toward oneself.
PL MOR 7. P95.

All that is needed to attract envy is the appearance of prosperity. No bounds are set to envy which is incited by everything resplendent; even hate has bounds.
PL MOR 7. P97.

Irrational animals may be the objects of hate, whereas envy occurs only between men.
PL MOR 7. P97.

It is never just to envy since good fortune is never unjust and it is for good fortune that men are envied. Many men are hated with justice because they are deserving of hate.
PL MOR 7. P99.

Hatred increases as the vice of those hated increases; envy increases as the virtue of those envied increases.
PL MOR 7. P103.

Supreme good fortune extinguishes envy; it is unlikely anyone envied Alexander or Cyrus once they had become masters of the world.
PL MOR 7. P103.

Hate is not made to relent by the pre-eminence and power of one’s enemies. Though none envied Alexander, many hated him.
PL MOR 7. P105.

Men leave off hate once they come to believe there is no injustice, or when they see that those they thought evil are good, or finally when they receive some benefit from them.
PL MOR 7. P105.

The intention of the hater is to injure while the envious would only pull down that part of the envied that casts him in the shade by exceeding his own.
PL MOR 7. P107.

The winners of the crown at the games are proclaimed victors by others, who thus remove the odium of self praise.
PL MOR 7. P117. Praise by others is the most pleasant recital to ourselves, praise by ourselves is the most distressing for others. Xenophon. Mem., ii. 1. 31.
PL MOR 7. P103.

When a statesman demands recognition for his acts, he does so because the enjoyment of confidence and good reputation afford means for further noble actions.
PL MOR 7. P119.

When one seeks praise to rival the honour done another such that their accomplishments may be dimmed in comparison, one’s conduct is frivolous, envious and spiteful.
PL MOR 7. P121.

We should not endure false or misplaced praise from others but should wait for honour to be bestowed with justness.
PL MOR 7. P121.

Self praise is not resented when you are defending your good name.
PL MOR 7. P123.

It is permissible for a wronged statesman to make some boast to those who deal with him harshly.
PL MOR 7. P127.

When Alexander honoured Hercules and Androcottus he won esteem for himself for similar merit; when Dionysius made sport of Gelon and dubbed him the jest of Sicily his envy defamed his own majesty.
PL MOR 7. P135.

With the fair minded it is not amiss to amend praise when it is eloquent, rich, or powerful, or to request another not to mention such points and consider rather whether one is of worthy character and leads a useful life.
PL MOR 7. P139.

Pericles rebuked them for extolling what many others had done as well and was in part the work or fortune rather than merit, while passing over his noblest encomium; that no Athenian had put on mourning for any act of his.
PL MOR 7. P139.

Men resent those who assume the epithet ‘wise,’ but delight in those who say that they love wisdom.
PL MOR 7. P143.

With reputation and character as with a house or an estate; the multitude envy those thought to have acquired them at no cost or trouble; they do not envy those who have earned them with much hardship and peril.
PL MOR 7. P147.

Only in danger and in battle did Cyrus boast.
PL MOR 7. P151. X. Cyro. vii,I.17.

One may be content to see the multitude censured and willing to abstain from vice when it is denounced, but if vice should acquire good standing and if honour and reputation should be added to its temptations by way of pleasure or profit there is no human nature so fortunate or strong that will not succumb. It is not against the praise of persons but of vicious acts that the statesman must wage war. This sort of praise perverts and promotes imitation and emulation of what is shameful as if it were noble.
PL MOR 7. P155.

False praise is seen for what it is when true praise is set beside it.
PL MOR 7. P155.

Boasting finds in self love a strong base of operations and we often detect its assaults against those who are held to take but modest interest in glory.
PL MOR 7. P157.

When others are praised our rivalry erupts into self praise; we are seized with a barely controllable yearning and urge for glory that burns like an itch.
PL MOR 7. P159.

In telling of fortunate exploits many are so pleased with themselves that they drift into vainglorious boasting.
PL MOR 7. P159.

We must look warily to ourselves when we recount praise received from others to assure that we do not allow any taint or appearance of self love to appear.
PL MOR 7. P161.

Old men especially go astray once they have been drawn into admonishing others and rating unworthy habits and unwise acts; they magnify themselves as men who in like circumstances have been prodigies of wisdom.
PL MOR 7. P161.

Pointing out the faults of our neighbours gives pain and becomes unbearable when a man intermingles praise for himself with censure of another and uses another’s disgrace to secure glory for himself. He is odious and vulgar who would win applause from the humiliation of another.
PL MOR 7. P163.

Better you should blush when praised and restrain those who would mention some merit of yours.
PL MOR 7. P163.

A sure precaution is to attend closely to the self praise of others and remember the distaste it occasioned.
PL MOR 7. P165.

Praise of one’s self always involves dispraise of others. We should avoid talking about ourselves unless we have in prospect some great advantage to our hearers or ourselves.
PL MOR 7. P167.

Injustice yields at once a timely and certain harvest, while justice comes too late for enjoyment.
PL MOR 7. P187.

Just as the prick that follows a misstep serves to correct a horse and a later beating only torments without instructing, I fail to see the good in that proverbial slow grinding the mill of the gods which obscures the punishment and allows the fear of wickedness to fade.
PL MOR 7. P187.

It is presumptuous for mere humans to inquire into the concerns of the gods and daemons. We are like laymen seeking to follow the thoughts of experts by guesswork.
PL MOR 7. P191.

The cure of the soul that goes by the names of chastisement and justice is the greatest of arts.
PL MOR 7. P191.

When we find it so hard to account for human laws, what wonder that it should be so difficult to understand why the gods punish some wrongdoers later and others sooner?
PL MOR 7. P193.

Man may derive from god no greater blessing than to become settled in virtue through copying and aspiring to the beauty and goodness that are his.
PL MOR 7. P195.

Zeus is slow to punish the wicked, not because he fears acting in haste and suffering remorse, but to remove brutishness from punishment and teach us not to strike out in anger.
PL MOR 7. P197.

Reason puts rage aside so that it may act with justice and moderation.
PL MOR 7. P197.

When we see Zeus, who knows no fear or regret, reserve his penalties for the future, we should hold our hand in such matters and imitate the divine virtues of gentleness and magnanimity.
PL MOR 7. P199.

Chastisements devised by man do no more than requite pain with pain.
PL MOR 7. P199.

We must presume that Zeus determines whether the passions of the sick soul will yield and make room for repentance before he administers his justice.
PL MOR 7. P201.

Zeus does not punish all in like manner, but promptly removes from life the incurable, since prolonged association with wickedness does harm to others without curing the sufferer.
PL MOR 7. P201.

Consider the many changes that occur in the characters and lives of men; this explains why the changeable part of man’s life is termed his ‘bent,’ since habit sinks very deep and wields power that is very great.
PL MOR 7. P201.

The Deity uses certain of the wicked as public executioners to chastise others; this is also true of most tyrants.
PL MOR 7. P209.

Hesiod held that punishment and injustice are coeval, springing from the same soil and root.
PL MOR 7. P215.

Wickedness engenders within itself its own pain and punishment and thus pays the penalty for its wrongdoing at the very moment of commission. As each criminal must carry his own burden, vice frames out of itself its own punishment.
PL MOR 7. P215.

Is it reasonable to consider punishment to be the ultimate affliction and ignore the intervening suffering, terror, foreboding and pangs of remorse?
PL MOR 7. P219.

Every wrongdoer is held fast in the toils of justice; he has swallowed like a bait the sweetness of his iniquity and in payment for his crime holds the barbs of conscience embedded in his vitals.
PL MOR 7. P219.

If nothing remains of the soul when life is done and death is the borne of all reward and punishment, the Divinity appears lax and negligent in dealing with offenders who meet an early punishment.
PL MOR 7. P223.

The soul of every wicked man torments itself with these thoughts: how might it escape the memory of its inequities, escape guilt, regain purity and begin life anew?
PL MOR 7. P227.

Where the frantic pursuit of wealth and pleasure or envy with ill will take up their abode, there you will discover superstition, laziness, cowardice, shifting purpose and an empty conceit for the opinion of the world that springs from swollen vanity. Such men not only fear those who censure them but have a horror of those who applaud them.
PL MOR 7. P229.

The perpetrators of evil need neither god not man to punish them; their lives, wholly ruined and plunged into turmoil, suffice for that office.
PL MOR 7. P231.

In justice, even the guilty cannot be punished twice for the same offence.
PL MOR 7. P231.

It we are to preserve the pleasure of virtue for our descendants, we must assure that neither punishment nor gratitude flag in their courses such that men are requited as they deserve.
PL MOR 7. P241.

Do we not find Zeus at fault in both cases when it goes hard with the children of a good or an evil father?
PL MOR 7. P243.

Despite changes in appearance and character a man is called the same from birth to death.
PL MOR 7. P247.

In the children of the wicked the father’s part is inherent, but as they live and thrive are they to be governed by thinking there is nothing absurd in receiving their father’s due?
PL MOR 7. P249.

A schoolmaster who strikes one boy admonishes others and a general who executes one in ten inspires the respect of an army.
PL MOR 7. P251.

The wicked, if punished through their descendants, must somehow survive for the punishment to reach them.
PL MOR 7. P251.

The same argument establishes the providence of god and the survival of the soul and it is impossible to upset the one convention and have the other stand.
PL MOR 7. P257.

Since the rewards and penalties the soul is to receive in the next world are unknown to the living, they are doubted and disbelieved, whereas rewards and punishments that reach their descendants are visible to deter the wicked.
PL MOR 7. P257.

The reason for making punishment a public spectacle is to restrain some men by punishing others.
PL MOR 7. P259.

Man’s nature is to enter into customs, doctrines and codes of conduct that often conceal his failings; by imitating a virtuous course he may escape an inherited stain.
PL MOR 7. P263.

Are we to believe that men become unjust when they commit an injustice, licentious when they gratify their lust, or cowards when they flee? One might as well say that scorpions grow their dart when they sting. Wicked men possess the vice from the outset and put it to practice when they find the opportunity.
PL MOR 7. P265.

Before the wrong is done Zeus often chastens the intention and disposition.
PL MOR 7. P267.

Although events extend infinitely into the past and future, fate encloses them all in a cycle that is finite, as no law nor formula nor anything divine can be infinite.
PL MOR 7. P317.

Things within our power are of two sorts, those proceeding from passion and those preceding from reason that allow for choice.
PL MOR 7. P333.

There is a false belief that enjoying good fortune and enjoying happiness are the same. However, good fortune comes to a man from without, whereas happiness is a kind of doing well that comes from within and is only found in a man when he has reached his full development.
PL MOR 7. P343.

The beneficent will of Zeus toward all things is the highest and primary Providence; in conformity with his divine will all things are arranged, each as is best and most excellent.
PL MOR 7. P343.

Zeus is good and in the good there is neither envy nor dispute; being free from these he wished all things to become as similar as might be to himself. You do rightly to accept this thought from men of wisdom as the foremost principle of Coming into Being and of Order.
PL MOR 7. P345.

Dull minds are content to learn the outcome, or general drift of history. The student fired with love of noble conduct and the works of virtue sees much chance in outcomes and is more delighted with the particulars of history where actions and their causes detail the struggles between virtue and vice.
PL MOR 7. P373.

Men engaged in public life and compelled to live at the caprice of a mob often use the superstitions of the populace as a bridle to pull them back to the better course. Such outward concerns are in conflict with the claims of Philosophy.
PL MOR 7. P403.

Socrates by no means denied things truly divine. He took the philosophy of Pythagoras and his followers as prey to phantoms, fables and superstitions and the philosophy of Empedocles as a wild state of exaltation. Socrates trained philosophy to face reality with steadfast understanding and to rely on reason in the pursuit of truth.
PL MOR 7. P403.

Heaven seems to have attached itself to Socrates from his youth as a guide and vision to show him the path.
PL MOR 7. P405.

One of the Megarian school had it from Terpsion that Socrates’ sign was a sneeze, his own and others.
PL MOR 7. P409. To face death’s terrors with unshaken reason is not the act of a man whose views are at the mercy of voices or sneezes, but of one guided by a higher authority and principles of noble conduct.
PL MOR 7. P411.

Socrates never spoke of receiving intimations from heaven, but from sneezes; it is similar to a man saying that the arrow wounded him and not the archer or that the scales and not the weigher measured the weight. The act belongs to he who does it, not to the instrument that accomplishes it.
PL MOR 7. P417.

It is a noble act to benefit friends and it is no disgrace to be benefited by them; any favour requires a recipient no less than a giver. He who refuses a favour is like a man who refuses to catch a well directed ball and allows it to fall to the ground.
PL MOR 7. P419.

The man who freely and repeatedly holds back from honourable and honest profits trains himself to keep aloof from dishonest and unlawful gain.
PL MOR 7. P433 bis.

He who does not yield to the favours of friends or the bounty of kings, who rejects the windfalls of fortune and calls off the greed that leaps at it, finds that cupidity does not throw his thoughts into turmoil. He readily disposes of himself for all good ends and holds his head high, conscious of the presence in his soul of nothing but the noblest thoughts.
PL MOR 7. P433.

Socrates believed that those who laid claim to visual communications with Heaven were impostors, while to those as affirmed they heard a voice he paid close attention.
PL MOR 7. P449.

Socrates’ sign was perhaps a voice or a mental apprehension of language that reached him in some strange way.
PL MOR 7. P451.

The messages of daemons pass through other men and find a listener in those whose character is untroubled.
PL MOR 7. P457.

Outsiders perceive the intentions of kings from beacons and the proclamations of heralds, whereas confidants learn from the kings themselves; in like manner heaven consorts directly with but few.
PL MOR 7. P481.

The words addressed to us by friends and the well meaning should mitigate, not vindicate, what distresses us. We don’t need tragic choruses, but men who speak frankly and instruct us that grief is futile.
PL MOR 7. P519.

You’ve not been hurt, unless you so pretend. Menander. Epitrepontes.
PL MOR 7. P519.

Banishment, loss of honour or fame, resemble their counterparts, crowns, high office and privilege, in that their measure causes sorrow and joy. It is not their nature to do so, but by our judgements, each of us by opinion makes heavy or light for himself.
PL MOR 7. P521.