01c. 83 ADAs geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.Plutarch / quote ↗
03c. 83 ADThe most perfect soul, says Heraclitus, is a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a cloud.Plutarch / quote ↗
04c. 83 ADAnacharsis coming to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and told him that he, being a stranger, was come to be his guest, and contract a friendship with him; and Solon replying, "It is better to make friends at home," Anacharsis replied, "Then you that are at home make friendship with me."Plutarch / quote ↗
05c. 83 ADThemistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.Plutarch / quote ↗
06c. 83 ADEurybiades lifting up his staff as if he were going to strike, Themistocles said, "Strike, if you will; but hear."Plutarch / quote ↗
07c. 83 ADThemistocles said to Antiphales, "Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson."Plutarch / quote ↗
08c. 83 ADLaughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."Plutarch / quote ↗
09c. 83 AD"You speak truth," said Themistocles; "I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens."Plutarch / quote ↗
10c. 83 ADThemistocles said that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can be shown only by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.Plutarch / quote ↗
11c. 83 ADWhen he was in great prosperity, and courted by many, seeing himself splendidly served at his table, he turned to his children and said: "Children, we had been undone, if we had not been undone."Plutarch / quote ↗
12c. 83 ADMoral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practise.Plutarch / quote ↗
13c. 83 ADFor ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.Plutarch / quote ↗
14c. 83 ADSo very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.Plutarch / quote ↗
16c. 83 ADTo conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature.Plutarch / quote ↗
17c. 83 ADMenenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: "It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites."Plutarch / quote ↗
18c. 83 ADKnowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.Plutarch / quote ↗
19c. 83 ADA Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me."Plutarch / quote ↗
20c. 83 ADThe saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, "The enemy's ships are more than ours," replied, "For how many then wilt thou reckon me?"Plutarch / quote ↗
21c. 83 ADArchimedes had stated, that given the force, any given weight might be moved; and even boasted that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this.Plutarch / quote ↗
22c. 83 ADIt is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.Plutarch / quote ↗
23c. 83 ADCato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.Plutarch / quote ↗
24c. 83 ADHe said that in his whole life he most repented of three things: one was that he had trusted a secret to a woman; another, that he went by water when he might have gone by land; the third, that he had remained one whole day without doing any business of moment.Plutarch / quote ↗
