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: Intelligence, Education, Thought
Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed than one in adversity.
—Plutarch
Topics: Adversity, Success & Failure, Prosperity
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
Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
—Plutarch
Topics: Conversation, Listening
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
Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
—Plutarch
Topics: Birth
I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall, or of marshalling great armies, or laying siege to cities.
—Plutarch
Prosperity is not just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
—Plutarch
Topics: Adversity, Friendship
Time is the soul of this world.
—Plutarch
Topics: Time Management
No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.
—Plutarch
Topics: Fate, Luck
To find fault, is easy; to do better may be difficult.
—Plutarch
Topics: Difficulty
I wish you all very good lives.
—Plutarch
He made the city Athens, great as it was when he took it, the greatest and richest of all cities, and grew to be superior in power to kings and tyrants. Some of these actually appointed him guardian of their sons, but he did not make his estate a single drachma greater than it was when his father left it to him.
—Plutarch
Solon being asked, namely, what city was best to live in. That city, he replied, in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.
—Plutarch
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.
—Plutarch
Time is the wisest of all counselors.
—Plutarch
Topics: Time Management, Time
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.
—Plutarch
Topics: Failure, Failures, Difficulties, Adversity, Mistakes
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.
—Plutarch
The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.
—Plutarch
Topics: The Present
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Epictetus Ancient Greek Philosopher
Plotinus Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mystic
Xenocrates Greek Philosopher, Scientist
Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
Plato Ancient Greek Philosopher
Sophocles Ancient Greek Dramatist
Epicurus Greek Philosopher
Euripides Ancient Greek Dramatist
Homer Ancient Greek Poet
Heraclitus Ancient Greek Philosopher