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branches ::: Plutarch

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object:Plutarch
object:Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus
subject class:History
subject class:Biography
subject class:Essay

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.ww_-_Dion_[See_Plutarch]

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
1.01_-_The_King_of_the_Wood
1.03_-_Sympathetic_Magic
1.04_-_The_Crossing_of_the_First_Threshold
1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes
1.09_-_The_Ambivalence_of_the_Fish_Symbol
1.09_-_The_Worship_of_Trees
1.13_-_The_Kings_of_Rome_and_Alba
1.14_-_Bibliography
1.14_-_The_Succesion_to_the_Kingdom_in_Ancient_Latium
1.15_-_Index
1.20_-_TANTUM_RELIGIO_POTUIT_SUADERE_MALORUM
1.26_-_Sacrifice_of_the_Kings_Son
1.38_-_The_Myth_of_Osiris
1.39_-_The_Ritual_of_Osiris
1.40_-_The_Nature_of_Osiris
1.42_-_Osiris_and_the_Sun
1.43_-_Dionysus
1.49_-_Ancient_Deities_of_Vegetation_as_Animals
1.50_-_Eating_the_God
1.58_-_Human_Scapegoats_in_Classical_Antiquity
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Tomb
1.ww_-_Dion_[See_Plutarch]
2.01_-_The_Road_of_Trials
3.04_-_LUNA
3.05_-_SAL
6.05_-_THE_PSYCHOLOGICAL_INTERPRETATION_OF_THE_PROCEDURE
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
BOOK_XIII._-_That_death_is_penal,_and_had_its_origin_in_Adam's_sin
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.05_-_Of_Love,_or_Eros.
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_How_the_Soul_Mediates_Between_Indivisible_and_Divisible_Essence.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
Symposium_translated_by_B_Jowett
The_Act_of_Creation_text
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Theologians
Timaeus

PRIMARY CLASS

SIMILAR TITLES
Plutarch

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Plutarch designates Aroeris as the son of Kronos and Rhea (i.e., Seb and Nut), which would make him the brother of Osiris, also the son of Nut. Originally Heru-ur was the twin god of Set, being the Face of the Sun by day, while Set was the Face by night. One representation of him is with the horns and the solar disk, similar to Khnemu or Khnum, with whom he is equivalent.

Plutarch of Athens: (5th century AD) Founder of Athenian Neo-Platonism, author of commentaries on Platonic and Pythagorean writings. Plutarch of Chaeronea: (about 100 AD) Famous biographer and author of several philosophical treatises. -- M.F.

plutarchy ::: n. --> Plutocracy; the rule of wealth.


TERMS ANYWHERE

Anubis (Greek) Anpu (Egyptian) Ȧnpu. The Egyptian jackal-headed deity, lord of the Silent Land of the West (the underworld). To him with Thoth was entrusted the psychopompic leading of the dead. In the judgment after death, Anubis tests the balance in the scene of the weighing of the heart. His offices were likewise those of the embalmer, mystically speaking. Originally the god of the underworld, he was later replaced by Osiris. In Heliopolis during the later dynasties he was identified with Horus, for he was often regarded as the son of Osiris and Isis — more often of Osiris and Nephthys (Neith). Plutarch writes: “By Anubis they understand the horizontal circle, which divides the invisible part of the world, which they call Nephthys, from the visible, to which they give the name of Isis; and as this circle equally touches upon the confines of both light and darkness, it may be looked upon as common to them both . . . Others again are of opinion that by Anubis is meant Time . . . ” (On Isis and Osiris, sec 44).

Apocatastasis (Greek) Restoration, return; used by Plato and Plutarch for a return of the stars to the same places.

Ass In the cults of Asia Minor a symbol of Set, Typhon, Satan, Jehovah, or Saturn. Jesus rides into Jerusalem “upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass,” in accordance with the prophecy in Zechariah (9:9). If the ass is Saturn, and its foal the earth (whose physical globe is governed by the genius of Saturn in connection with the moon), this is an apt symbol of the descent of the Christos into the lower worlds. Plutarch relates that Typhon or Set fled on an ass into Palestine and there founded Hierosolymus and Judaeus (De Iside et Osiride, ch 30).

As time went on certain deities became more prominent in theological thought and speculation, acquiring celestial attributes as well as earthly ones, such as Ba‘al, Astarte (made equivalent to Isis by Plutarch), and the Tyrian Melqarth (associated with Herakles). Originally each masculine deity had the title Ba‘al (“lord,” equivalent to Babylonian Bel), and the feminine deities had the title of ’Amma (mother), just as the ancient Hebrews spoke of their ’em or ’ammah (fountain, beginning, womb, mother). The gods were called ’elomim or ’elim, from the original Shemetic root ’el. The god of the moon was Sin, the deity of the flame or lightning was Resh Reshuf and Eshmun was the god of vital force or healing (worshiped especially at Sidon) — clearly ’Eshmun is from the Shemitic verbal root ’esh (fire, cosmic fire or vitality) — cosmic vital electricity or fohat. Blavatsky states that the Phoenicians also propitiated the kabeiroi, deities of Samothrace.

biographer ::: n. --> One who writes an account or history of the life of a particular person; a writer of lives, as Plutarch.

Plutarch designates Aroeris as the son of Kronos and Rhea (i.e., Seb and Nut), which would make him the brother of Osiris, also the son of Nut. Originally Heru-ur was the twin god of Set, being the Face of the Sun by day, while Set was the Face by night. One representation of him is with the horns and the solar disk, similar to Khnemu or Khnum, with whom he is equivalent.

Plutarch of Athens: (5th century AD) Founder of Athenian Neo-Platonism, author of commentaries on Platonic and Pythagorean writings. Plutarch of Chaeronea: (about 100 AD) Famous biographer and author of several philosophical treatises. -- M.F.

Gymnosophists [from Greek gymnosophistai naked wise men] Name given by the Greeks to the ascetics met by Alexander in India, as mentioned by Plutarch and others. They are said in some cases to have practiced extreme asceticism, including virtual nudity in all weathers; these “learned yogis and ascetic type philosophers who returned to the jungle and forest, there to reach through great austerities superhuman knowledge and experience,” are said to have possessed occult powers due to their mode of life and to the traditional knowledge which they had (TG 130, IU 1:90, 113).

Hermanubis (Greek) Heru-em-Anpu (Egyptian) Ḥeru-em-Ȧnpu [Anubis in connection with Horus] The aspect of Anubis (Anpu) connected with the wisdom of the underworld, particularly in regard to its Mysteries, hence very little is known of this phase except what is mentioned mainly by Plutarch and Apuleius. In this aspect Anubis was “ ‘the revealer of the mysteries of the lower world’ — not of Hell or Hades as interpreted, but of our Earth (the lowest world of the septenary chain of worlds) — and also of the sexual mysteries. . . . The fact is that esoterically, Adam and Eve while representing the early third Root Race — those who, being still mindless, imitated the animals and degraded themselves with the latter — stand also as the dual symbol of the sexes. Hence Anubis, the Egyptian god of generation, is represented with the head of an animal, a dog or a jackal, and is also said to be the ‘Lord of the under world’ or ‘Hades’ into which he introduces the souls of the dead (the reincarnating entities), for Hades is in one sense the womb, as some of the writings of the Church Fathers fully show” (TG 139-40).

Hyle (Greek) Wood, material; primordial matter as first manifested in and from Chaos, but as yet undifferentiated; the Mother, paired with spirit as Father. A Pythagorean word and, according to Plutarch, one of a lower tetraktys consisting of to agathon (the good), nous (intelligence), psyche (soul), and hyle (matter). Equivalent to ilus.

  “If we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch, these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: ‘Osiris represents the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but, being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by periodical passion [suffering] (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if he should never die.’ Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world, Aroueris, or the ‘elder Horus’ is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the saying that ‘he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the bosom of their mother’ — Space” (TG 31).

“If we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch, these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: ‘Osiris represents the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but, being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by periodical passion (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if he should never die.’ Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world, Aroueris, or the ‘elder Horus,’ is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the saying that ‘he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the bosom of their mother’ — Space” (TG 31). See also HORUS

In ancient times the name came to be linked frequently with Sabazius, usually identified with Dionysos, Plutarch in several places (cf Symp 4:6) hinting that the Jews in their worship were connected in some manner with Sabazius or Dionysos. Blavatsky states that the Jewish connection is with Saturn, both with the god and the planet, who was “the patron-guide of Israel” (SD 1:459).

Jerusalem (Hebrew) Yĕrūshālēm, Yĕrūshālayim Represents the earth; in Christian and Qabbalistic symbology, also the city of God or the heavenly Jerusalem, the goal of human spiritual attainment. “In Hebrew it is written Yrshlim or ‘city of peace,’ but the ancient Greeks called it pertinently Hierosalem or ‘Secret Salem,’ since Jerusalem is a rebirth from Salem of which Melchizedek was the King-Hierophant, a declared Astrolator and worshipper of the Sun, ‘the Most High’ . . .” (TG 164). Plutarch relates that Typhon or Set after a long battle with Horus fled on an ass in to Palestine and there founded Hierosolymus and Judaeus — these two names meaning Jerusalem and the Jews (Isis and Osiris, sec 31).

Monogenes (Greek) Begotten alone; of the same parentage. Plutarch defines it as “only begetting,” in reference to the meaning of Persephone in the Mysteries. It is the reappearance of a monad after its period of cosmic repose and nirvanic absence from the plane of cosmic manifestation.

Neith or Net (Egyptian) Neith or Net. One of the most ancient Egyptian deities, the Lady of the West. Her characteristic symbol is the arrow; later Greek writers equated her with Pallas Athene. In late dynastic times, Net was closely associated with Hathor, but in the earliest records she is connected with the primeval watery ocean or cosmic chaos, from which arose the sun god Ra. More often she was associated with Isis — her concrete or manifested self — being called “the great goddess, mother of all the gods, mistress of heaven who came into being in the beginning.” Net is portrayed as the virgin mother, suckling the infant Horus, similar to the representations of Isis. The famous passage given by Plutarch (Isis and Osiris ch 9) generally attributed to Isis, was said to have been found engraved upon a statue of Net. Plutarch also states that the Egyptians often called Isis Athene, signifying “I have come from myself” (ch 42).

“No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus woman was regarded and treated, from the first dawn of popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods” (SD 1:136n). The aspects of Isis, for instance, are familiar enough: as the mother with her child, and as the faithful spiritual consort of Osiris — these were for easier understanding by the populace; but in the sanctuary Isis remained universal cosmic nature, the cosmic producing mother, the goddess whose veil of nature no mere human had ever raised. Plutarch recorded an inscription addressed to Isis: “I am everything which has been, and which is, and which shall be, and no one has ever drawn my veil” (De Iside at Osiride); to which were added “the fruit of my womb became the Sun” (Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus, 1:82).

plutarchy ::: n. --> Plutocracy; the rule of wealth.

Pythia or Pythoness (Greek) Pytho was an older name for Delphi, and from it was formed the adjective Pythius, in the feminine Pythia. This was applied to the priestess or seeress who gave the oracles of Apollo at Delphi. “On the authority of Iamblichus, Plutarch and others, a Pythia was a priestess chosen among the sensitive of the poorer classes, and placed in a temple where oracular powers were exercised. There she had a room secluded from all but the chief Hierophant and Seer, and once admitted, was, like a nun, lost to the world. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapours, these subterranean exhalations, penetrating her whole system, produced the prophetic mania, in which abnormal state she delivered oracles. Aristophanes in ‘Vaestas’ [Vespae] I., reg. 28, calls the Pythia ventriloqua vates or the ‘ventriloquial prophetess,’ on account of her stomach-voice. The ancients placed the soul of man (the lower Manas) or his personal self-consciousness, in the pit of his stomach. . . . The navel was regarded in antiquity as ‘the circle of the sun,’ the seat of divine internal light. Therefore was the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the city of Delphus, the womb or abdomen — while the seat of the temple was called the omphalos, navel” (TG 266-7).

Rhizomata (Greek) [plural of rhizoma root, element] The four elements forming the second quaternary in the Pythagorean system, according to Plutarch, the first quaternary being purely spiritual.

Second Death ::: This is a phrase used by ancient and modern mystics to describe the dissolution of the principles of manremaining in kama-loka after the death of the physical body. For instance, Plutarch says: "Of the deathswe die, the one makes man two of three, and the other, one out of two." Thus, using the simple divisionof man into spirit, soul, and body: the first death is the dropping of the body, making two out of three; thesecond death is the withdrawal of the spiritual from the kama-rupic soul, making one out of two.The second death takes place when the lower or intermediate duad (manas-kama) in its turn separatesfrom, or rather is cast off by, the upper duad; but preceding this event the upper duad gathers unto itselffrom this lower duad what is called the reincarnating ego, which is all the best of the entity that was, allits purest and most spiritual and noblest aspirations and hopes and dreams for betterment and for beautyand harmony. Inherent in the fabric, so to speak, of the reincarnating ego, there remain of course theseeds of the lower principles which at the succeeding rebirth or reincarnation of the ego will develop intothe complex of the lower quaternary. (See also Kama-Rupa)

Serapis [from Greek Sarapis from Egyptian Ȧsȧr-Ḥāpi Osiris-Apis] The most important deity at Alexandria during the time of Ptolemy Soter, its worship spread throughout Egypt and into the Roman Empire, establishing itself firmly even in Rome. Plutarch recounts that Ptolemy Soter in his desire to make Alexandria the chief center of his empire, sought to unite Greeks and Egyptians in a common worship. He dreamed that a strange god appeared to him and, on telling his friends, one said that he had seen such a statue at Sinope. The king immediately imported this statue, the Greeks, declaring that it represented Pluto, ruler of the underworld, with his guardian dog Cerberus, while the Egyptians stated that it portrayed Asar-Hapi (Osiris in the underworld) with Anubis. Plutarch states that Osiris is the same as Sarapis, “this latter appellation having been given him, upon his being translated from the order of Genii to that of the Gods, Sarapis being none other than that common name by which all those are called, who have thus changed their nature, as is well known by those who are initiated into the mysteries of Osiris” (On Isis and Osiris, sec 28).

Syncretism: (Gr. syn., with; and either kretidzein, or kerannynai, to mix incompatible elements) A movement to bring about a harmony of positions in philosophy or theology which are somewhat opposed or different. Earliest usage (Plutarch) in connection with the Neo-Platonic effort to unify various pagan religions in the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D. Next used in Renaissance (Bessarion) in reference to the proposed union of the Eastern and Western Citholic Churches, also denoted the contemporary movement to harmonize the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle; again in 17th century used by Georg Calixt in regard to proposed union of the Lutheran with other Protestant bodies and also with Catholicism. -- V.J.B.

Tabernacles, Feast of The feast which the Hebrews celebrated in the autumn as a thanksgiving for the produce gathered, especially for the harvest of olives and grapes, which was called the feast of ingatherings (Ex 23:16) or the feast of booths (Deut 16:13). It commenced on the 15th of the month Ethanim and lasted until the 22nd. While the festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries was held in the month Boedromion — corresponding to September, the time of grape gathering — Plutarch thought that the feast of booths was not the Eleusian but the Bacchic rites.

The deity also became associated with the Jewish Sabaoth (Tseba’oth) for Plutarch states that the Jews worshiped Dionysos, and that the day of the Jewish Sabbath was, in his opinion, a festival of Sabazius (Symposium. 4:6).

The mysteries of Osiris and Isis were revived in Rome, and Apuleius (2nd century) in The Golden Ass tells of the Procession of Isis, in which the dual aspect of Anubis was portrayed: “that messenger between heaven and hell displaying alternately a face black as night, and golden as the day; in his left the caduceus, in his right waving aloft the green palm branch” (Gods of the Egyptians, Budge 2:264-5). In most of his attributes, Anubis is a lunar power, Plutarch connecting him with the Grecian Hecate, one of the names for the moon; and this is further emphasized by his being a guide of the dead. Also identified with Hermes as psychopomp. See also Hermanubis



QUOTES [7 / 7 - 655 / 655]


KEYS (10k)

   6 Plutarch
   1 Mortimer J Adler

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

  535 Plutarch
   26 Suzanne Collins
   6 John D Agata
   3 Ryan Holiday
   3 Mortimer J Adler
   3 Michel de Montaigne
   3 Alexandre Dumas
   2 T S Eliot
   2 Stacy Schiff
   2 Ron Chernow
   2 Louis L Amour
   2 J K Rowling
   2 H G Wells
   2 Elizabeth Speller
   2 Edward Gibbon

1:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch,
2:A pleasant and happy life does not come from external things. Man draws from within himself, as from a spring, pleasure and joy." ~ Plutarch,
3:When one ceases to gain, one begins to lose. What matters is not to advance quickly, but to be always advancing. ~ Plutarch, the Eternal Wisdom
4:You must have learned principles so firmly that when your desires, your appetites or your fears awaken like barking dogs, the logos will speak with the voice of a master who silences the dogs by a single command. ~ Plutarch,
5:In vain are you rich if you do not quell your passions; if an insatiable cupidity eats you up, if you are the prey of fears and anxieties, of what use to you is your opulence?. ~ Plutarch, the Eternal Wisdom
6:Is it from without that there can come to a man the sweetness and the charm of his life? Is it not rather from the wisdom of his virtues that flow as from a happy source his real pleasures and his real joys? ~ Plutarch, the Eternal Wisdom
7:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
   ~ Mortimer J Adler,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Character is inured habit. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
2:Painting is silent poetry. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
3:The great god Pan is dead. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
4:Words will build no walls. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
5:A fool cannot hold his tongue. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
6:Beauty is the flower of virtue. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
7:Philosophy is an act of living. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
8:Reason speaks and feeling bites ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
9:Philosophy is the art of living. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
10:Character is long-standing habit. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
11:Custom is almost a second nature. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
12:Neither blame or praise yourself. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
13:Rest is the sweet sauce of labor. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
14:Silence is an answer to a wise man. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
15:Either is both, and Both is neither. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
16:A healer of others, himself diseased. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
17:Come back with your shield - or on it ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
18:I see the cure is not worth the pain. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
19:Time is the wisest of all counselors. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
20:Nature and wisdom never are at strife. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
21:The wildest colts make the best horses. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
22:Caesar's wife should be above suspicion. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
23:Character is simply habit long continued. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
24:For the wise man, every day is a festival. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
25:To fail to do good is as bad as doing harm. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
26:Knavery is the best defense against a knave. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
27:To please the many is to displease the wise. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
28:When the candles are out all women are fair. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
29:If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
30:Instead of using medicine, better fast today. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
31:What can they suffer that do not fear to die? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
32:Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
33:Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
34:A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
35:A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
36:Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
37:What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
38:Proper listening is the foundation of proper living. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
39:He [Caesar] loved the treason, but hated the traitor. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
40:That proverbial saying, "Ill news goes quick and far. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
41:To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
42:Democritus said, words are but the shadows of actions. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
43:He shall fare well who confronts circumstances aright. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
44:Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
45:An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
46:Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
47:Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
48:Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
49:He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
50:The authors of great evils know best how to remove them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
51:The measure of a man is way he bears up under misfortune ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
52:The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
53:Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
54:God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
55:Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars). ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
56:Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
57:The richest soil, if cultivated, produces the rankest weeds ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
58:When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
59:A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
60:From Themistocles began the saying, "He is a second Hercules. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
61:The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
62:There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
63:Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
64:Choose what is best, and habit will make it pleasant and easy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
65:Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
66:Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
67:Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
68:Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
69:The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
70:The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
71:Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
72:The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
73:Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
74:Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
75:Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
76:Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
77:Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
78:There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
79:That we may consult concerning others, and not others concerning us. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
80:Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
81:He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
82:The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
83:It was not important how many enemies there are, but where the enemy is ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
84:Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
85:The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
86:Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
87:What, did you not know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
88:I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
89:The drop hollows out the stone not by strength, but by constant falling. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
90:We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
91:When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
92:I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
93:Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
94:The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
95:Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
96:Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
97:Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
98:The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
99:The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
100:Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
101:He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
102:Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
103:Oh, what a world full of pain we create, for a little taste upon the tongue. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
104:Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
105:Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
106:These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
107:The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
108:Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
109:The first evil those who are prone to talk suffer, is that they hear nothing. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
110:Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
111:It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
112:Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
113:When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
114:Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
115:For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
116:It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
117:In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
118:Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
119:Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
120:I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
121:No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
122:A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He answered, "In silence. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
123:Learn to be pleased with everything... because it could always be worse, but isn't! ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
124:Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
125:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
126:He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
127:It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
128:Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
129:To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
130:Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
131:Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
132:Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
133:I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
134:It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
135:Concerning the dead nothing but good shall be spoken. [Lat., De mortuis nil nisi bonum.] ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
136:So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
137:The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a bridle. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
138:A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
139:An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
140:I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
141:King Agis said, "The Lacedæmonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
142:Pythagoras, when he was asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of this world. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
143:The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
144:Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
145:The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
146:When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
147:Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
148:Gout is not relieved by a fine shoe nor a hangnail by a costly ring nor migraine by a tiara. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
149:It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
150:No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
151:Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
152:Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
153:Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores You keep to your own ways, and leave mine to me ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
154:Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
155:Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
156:It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible to recall what has been uttered. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
157:The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
158:It is wise to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
159:Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
160:Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
161:Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
162:It is a high distinction for a homely woman to be loved for her character rather than for beauty. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
163:Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
164:Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
165:The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
166:They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
167:What All The World Knows Water is the principle, or the element, of things. All things are water. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
168:Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
169:Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
170:It is the admirer of himself, and not the admirer of virtue, that thinks himself superior to others. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
171:The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
172:The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
173:For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
174:Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
175:He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
176:It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
177:Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
178:The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
179:He who cheats with an oath acknowledges that he is afraid of his enemy, but that he thinks little of God. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
180:I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
181:Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
182:The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
183:I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
184:The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
185:The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
186:Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
187:Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
188:We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
189:Remember what Simonides said, that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
190:When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
191:Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
192:The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
193:Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
194:Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me! ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
195:The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
196:The whole life is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
197:We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
198:After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: "I came, I saw, I conquered. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
199:Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
200:Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
201:God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
202:I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
203:All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
204:Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
205:Even a nod from a person who is esteemed is of more force than a thousand arguments or studied sentences from others. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
206:It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
207:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
208:Grief is like a physical pain which must be allowed to subside somewhat on its own before medical treatment is applied. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
209:Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
210:Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
211:Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
212:The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
213:To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
214:Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
215:Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
216:Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
217:Pittacus said, "Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only". ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
218:... To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
219:A soldier told Pelopidas, "We are fallen among the enemies." Said he, "How are we fallen among them more than they among us? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
220:It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
221:Our nature holds so much envy and malice that our pleasure in our own advantages is not so great as our distress at others'. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
222:A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but also when they are old and past service. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
223:Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
224:When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, &
225: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, @wisdomtrove
226:As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
227:Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
228:A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it." ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
229:Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
230:Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
231:Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
232:It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
233:Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
234:To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
235:When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
236:Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
237:Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
238:Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm? Is it that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
239:Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
240:Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
241:Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
242:When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
243:Grief is natural; the absence of all feeling is undesirable, but moderation in grief should be observed, as in the face of all good or evil. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
244:One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
245:There are two sentences inscribed upon the Ancient oracle... "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much"; and upon these all other precepts depend. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
246:So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
247:Let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
248:Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
249:Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
250:There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
251:Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
252:Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
253:Demosthenes told Phocion, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
254:For man is a plant, not fixed in the earth, nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising as it were from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
255: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, @wisdomtrove
256:The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
257:As bees extract honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so sensible men often get advantage and profit from the most awkward circumstances. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
258:Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
259:What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
260:A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can." ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
261:Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
262:Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that "It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
263:The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
264:Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
265:Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, "My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
266: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. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
267:There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
268:When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
269:A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
270:It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
271:Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, "She can choose best," and so took both away with him. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
272:Demosthenes, when taunted by Pytheas that all his arguments "smelled of the lamp," replied, "Yes, but your lamp and mine, my friend, do not witness the same labours. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
273:If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
274: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, @wisdomtrove
275:Archimedes 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, @wisdomtrove
276:But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
277:Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people,... he turned to his friend and said, "Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
278:Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
279:A remorseful change of mind renders even a noble action base, whereas the determination which is grounded on knowledge and reason cannot change even if its actions fail. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
280:But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
281:The 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, @wisdomtrove
282: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, @wisdomtrove
283:In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
284:Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
285:If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
286:A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
287: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, @wisdomtrove
288:The soul of man... is a portion or a copy of the soul of the Universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the Universe. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
289:We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
290:Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
291:When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I &
292:Learn to be pleased with everything; with wealth, so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for, and with obscurity, for being unenvied. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
293:Politics is not like an ocean voyage or a military campaign... something which leaves off as soon as reached. It is not a public chore to be gotten over with. It is a way of life. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
294:To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
295:The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
296:The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
297:What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
298:To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
299:It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
300:Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
301:When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
302:When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
303: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, @wisdomtrove
304:He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
305:Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
306:To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
307:For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
308:For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
309:He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." [&
310:Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
311:Cato 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, @wisdomtrove
312:The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
313:For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
314:If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
315:Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
316: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, @wisdomtrove
317:He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
318:It is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
319:Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
320:There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
321:If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
322:Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied... . ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
323:Since, during storms, flames leap from the humid vapors and dark clouds emit deafening noises, is it surprising the lightning, when it strikes the ground, gives rise to truffles, which do not resemble plants? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
324:After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
325:If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
326:Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
327:Prosperity has this property; it puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and leads them to look down upon the world with contempt; but a truly noble spirit appears greatest in distress; ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
328:I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, "Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
329:The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
330:As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
331:So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
332:Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm of Antigonus. "That," said he, "is too little for a king to give." "Why, then," said the other, "give me a talent." "And that," said he, "is too much for a Cynic (or, for a dog) to receive. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
333:Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
334:Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
335:Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man's self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
336:Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
337:Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
338:Though others before him had triumphed three times, Pompeius, by having gained his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and this the last over Asia, seemed in a manner to have brought the whole world into his three triumphs. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
339:The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
340:Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
341:As 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, @wisdomtrove
342:And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!". ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
343:To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
344:When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
345:Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
346:Paulus Aemilius, on taking command of the forces in Macedonia, and finding them talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all commanders, issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keen swords, and leave the rest to ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
347:Pompey had fought brilliantly and in the end routed Caesar's whole force... but either he was unable to or else he feared to push on. Caesar [said] to his friends: &
348:It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
349:Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
350:If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
351:Nothing can produce so great a serenity of life as a mind free from guilt and kept untainted, not only from actions, but purposes that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted but also undisturbed. The fountain will run clear and unsullied. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
352:The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
353:Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia, but declared at the trial that he knew nothing of what was alleged against her and Clodius. When asked why, in that case, he had divorced her, he replied: Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
354:It is not the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered; but very often an action of small note. An casual remark or joke shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
355:Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
356:Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
357:Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
358:Such power I gave the people as might do, Abridged not what they had, now lavished new, Those that were great in wealth and high in place My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I held my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
359:A 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, @wisdomtrove
360:He (Cato) used to say that in all his life he never repented but of three things. The first was that he had trusted a woman with a secret; the second that he had gone by sea when he might have gone by land; and the third, that had passed one day without having a will by him. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
361:When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
362:When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
363:Anacharsis 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, @wisdomtrove
364:As to Caesar, when he was called upon, he gave no testimony against Clodius, nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said, He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be clear of such a crime, but of the very suspicion of it. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
365:Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
366:Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
367:What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful; what but Will, if rightly ordered, prove productive and bring its fruit to maturity? What strength of body is there which will not lose its vigor and fall to decay by laziness, nice usage, and debauchery? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
368:Whenever Alexander heard Philip had taken any town of importance, or won any signal victory, instead of rejoicing at it altogether, he would tell his companions that his father would anticipate everything, and leave him and them no opportunities of performing great and illustrious actions. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
369: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, @wisdomtrove
370:For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
371:Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
372:Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
373:As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
374:While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, "Come and get them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
375:Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
376:Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
377:The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
378:It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
379:Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
380:Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
381:Poverty is never dishonourable in itself, but only when it is a mark of sloth, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness. When, on the other hand, it is the handmaid of a sober, industrious, righteous, and brave man, who devotes all his powers to the service of the people, it is the sign of a lofty spirit that harbours no mean thoughts ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
382:Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them, thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
383:When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
384:For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium from the elite than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
385:But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
386:For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
387:Seeing the lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black; and he would often go out of doors, after his morning meal, without either shoes or tunic; not that he sought vain-glory from such novelties, but he would accustom himself to be ashamed only of what deserves shame, and to despise all other sorts of disgrace. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
388:By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?" What more valuable for the elevation of our own character? ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
389:We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
390:... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
391:This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center." ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
392:The first man . . . 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, @wisdomtrove
393: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, @wisdomtrove
394:Of the land which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbours, part they sold publicly, and turned the remainder into common; this common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and indigent, for which they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
395:Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
396:Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
397:I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice. …but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
398:Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:The belly has no ears. ~ Plutarch,
2:Character is inured habit. ~ Plutarch,
3:Painting is silent poetry. ~ Plutarch,
4:The great god Pan is dead. ~ Plutarch,
5:Words will build no walls. ~ Plutarch,
6:Barba non facit philosophum ~ Plutarch,
7:A fool cannot hold his tongue. ~ Plutarch,
8:Beauty is the flower of virtue. ~ Plutarch,
9:Philosophy is an act of living. ~ Plutarch,
10:Reason speaks and feeling bites ~ Plutarch,
11:Philosophy is the art of living. ~ Plutarch,
12:Character is long-standing habit. ~ Plutarch,
13:Custom is almost a second nature. ~ Plutarch,
14:Neither blame or praise yourself. ~ Plutarch,
15:Rest is the sweet sauce of labor. ~ Plutarch,
16:Silence is an answer to a wise man. ~ Plutarch,
17:Either is both, and Both is neither. ~ Plutarch,
18:A healer of others, himself diseased. ~ Plutarch,
19:Come back with your shield - or on it ~ Plutarch,
20:I see the cure is not worth the pain. ~ Plutarch,
21:Time is the wisest of all counselors. ~ Plutarch,
22:Nature and wisdom never are at strife. ~ Plutarch,
23:The wildest colts make the best horses. ~ Plutarch,
24:Caesar's wife should be above suspicion. ~ Plutarch,
25:Character is simply habit long continued. ~ Plutarch,
26:For the wise man, every day is a festival. ~ Plutarch,
27:Such power I gave the people as might do, ~ Plutarch,
28:To fail to do good is as bad as doing harm. ~ Plutarch,
29:Knavery is the best defense against a knave. ~ Plutarch,
30:To please the many is to displease the wise. ~ Plutarch,
31:When the candles are out all women are fair. ~ Plutarch,
32:If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. ~ Plutarch,
33:Instead of using medicine, better fast today. ~ Plutarch,
34:Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores ~ Plutarch,
35:What can they suffer that do not fear to die? ~ Plutarch,
36:Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers. ~ Plutarch,
37:Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends. ~ Plutarch,
38:Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye. ~ Plutarch,
39:A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress. ~ Plutarch,
40:L'amicizia è animale da compagnia, non da gregge. ~ Plutarch,
41:Machiavelli’s The Prince and Plutarch’s Lives, ~ Ron Chernow,
42:A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues. ~ Plutarch,
43:The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and ~ Plutarch,
44:Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord. ~ Plutarch,
45:Plutarch slides the sketchbook across to me. ~ Suzanne Collins,
46:What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. ~ Plutarch,
47:Proper listening is the foundation of proper living. ~ Plutarch,
48:Concerning the dead nothing but good shall be spoken. ~ Plutarch,
49:He [Caesar] loved the treason, but hated the traitor. ~ Plutarch,
50:That proverbial saying, "Ill news goes quick and far. ~ Plutarch,
51:To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult. ~ Plutarch,
52:Democritus said, words are but the shadows of actions. ~ Plutarch,
53:He shall fare well who confronts circumstances aright. ~ Plutarch,
54:Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly. ~ Plutarch,
55:An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave. ~ Plutarch,
56:Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow. ~ Plutarch,
57:Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist. ~ Plutarch,
58:He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves ~ Plutarch,
59:The authors of great evils know best how to remove them. ~ Plutarch,
60:The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds. ~ Plutarch,
61:Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance. ~ Plutarch,
62:God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse. ~ Plutarch,
63:Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars). ~ Plutarch,
64:Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors. ~ Plutarch,
65:When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back. ~ Plutarch,
66:A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line. ~ Plutarch,
67:The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. ~ Plutarch,
68:There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue. ~ Plutarch,
69:Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit. ~ Plutarch,
70:A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. ~ Plutarch,
71:Choose what is best, and habit will make it pleasant and easy. ~ Plutarch,
72:Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy. ~ Plutarch,
73:Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles. ~ Plutarch,
74:From Themistocles began the saying, "He is a second Hercules." ~ Plutarch,
75:Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage. ~ Plutarch,
76:Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. ~ Plutarch,
77:The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds. ~ Plutarch,
78:The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. ~ Plutarch,
79:Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them. ~ Plutarch,
80:The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. ~ Plutarch,
81:Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities. ~ Plutarch,
82:Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence. ~ Plutarch,
83:The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. ~ Plutarch,
84:The whole like of a man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. ~ Plutarch,
85:Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love. ~ Plutarch,
86:Painting is silent poetry,
and poetry is painting that speaks. ~ Plutarch,
87:That’s her!” I hear Fulvia hiss to Plutarch. “Right there. ~ Suzanne Collins,
88:The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. ~ Plutarch,
89:Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself. ~ Plutarch,
90:Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. ~ Plutarch,
91:There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice. ~ Plutarch,
92:That we may consult concerning others, and not others concerning us. ~ Plutarch,
93:Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected. ~ Plutarch,
94:He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush. ~ Plutarch,
95:The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. ~ Plutarch,
96:It was not important how many enemies there are, but where the enemy is ~ Plutarch,
97:Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. ~ Plutarch,
98:The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it. ~ Plutarch,
99:Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging. ~ Plutarch,
100:What, did you not know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus? ~ Plutarch,
101:I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is. ~ Plutarch,
102:The drop hollows out the stone not by strength, but by constant falling. ~ Plutarch,
103:We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature. ~ Plutarch,
104:When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something. ~ Plutarch,
105:I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up. ~ Plutarch,
106:Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into. ~ Plutarch,
107:Luckily, one of my teachers got me started on Plutarch and Montaigne. ~ Louis L Amour,
108:The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. ~ Plutarch,
109:The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs kindling. ~ Plutarch,
110:The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil. ~ Plutarch,
111:Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises. ~ Plutarch,
112:Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses. ~ Plutarch,
113:Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to. ~ Plutarch,
114:The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length. ~ Plutarch,
115:The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse. ~ Plutarch,
116:Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's. ~ Plutarch,
117:He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach. ~ Plutarch,
118:next to the Bible more great men had read Plutarch than any other book. ~ Louis L Amour,
119:Oh, what a world full of pain we create, for a little taste upon the tongue. ~ Plutarch,
120:Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends. ~ Plutarch,
121:Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~ Plutarch,
122:These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade. ~ Plutarch,
123:The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart. ~ Plutarch,
124:Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is. ~ Plutarch,
125:The first evil those who are prone to talk suffer, is that they hear nothing. ~ Plutarch,
126:Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men. ~ Plutarch,
127:Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for. ~ Plutarch,
128:It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp. ~ Plutarch,
129:Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war. ~ Plutarch,
130:When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door. ~ Plutarch,
131:You know what I miss? More than anything? Coffee. -- Plutarch Heavensbee ~ Suzanne Collins,
132:Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies. ~ Plutarch,
133:For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human. ~ Plutarch,
134:It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything. ~ Plutarch,
135:In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. ~ Plutarch,
136:Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun. ~ Plutarch,
137:Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp. ~ Plutarch,
138:I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing. ~ Plutarch,
139:Learn to be pleased with everything...because it could always be worse, but isn't! ~ Plutarch,
140:No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage. ~ Plutarch,
141:no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage. ~ Plutarch,
142:Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave. ~ Plutarch,
143:A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He answered, "In silence." ~ Plutarch,
144:He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself ~ Plutarch,
145:What many people today assume Christianity to be is basically Plutarch plus Jesus. ~ N T Wright,
146:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch,
147:It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears. ~ Plutarch,
148:Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk. ~ Plutarch,
149:To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature. ~ Plutarch,
150:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch,
151:Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young. ~ Plutarch,
152:Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny. ~ Plutarch,
153:Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man. ~ Plutarch,
154:I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot. ~ Plutarch,
155:It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. ~ Plutarch,
156:It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. ~ Plutarch,
157:So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history. ~ Plutarch,
158:The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a bridle. ~ Plutarch,
159:A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. ~ Plutarch,
160:An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. ~ Plutarch,
161:I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised. ~ Plutarch,
162:Pythagoras, when he was asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of this world. ~ Plutarch,
163:The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration. ~ Plutarch,
164:Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures. ~ Plutarch,
165:King Agis said, "The Lacedæmonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are." ~ Plutarch,
166:The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. ~ Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures.,
167:The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others. ~ Plutarch,
168:When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself. ~ Plutarch,
169:Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause. ~ Plutarch,
170:Gout is not relieved by a fine shoe nor a hangnail by a costly ring nor migraine by a tiara. ~ Plutarch,
171:It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. ~ Plutarch,
172:No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune. ~ Plutarch,
173:Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price. ~ Plutarch,
174:Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty. ~ Plutarch,
175:Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall. ~ Plutarch,
176:Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades. ~ Plutarch,
177:It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible to recall what has been uttered. ~ Plutarch,
178:The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses. ~ Plutarch,
179:Ingratitude towards their great men,” says Plutarch, “is the mark of strong peoples. ~ Winston S Churchill,
180:It is wise to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well. ~ Plutarch,
181:Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity. ~ Plutarch,
182:Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature. ~ Plutarch,
183:Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. ~ Plutarch,
184:It is a high distinction for a homely woman to be loved for her character rather than for beauty. ~ Plutarch,
185:Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice. ~ Plutarch,
186:Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well. ~ Plutarch,
187:The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it. ~ Plutarch,
188:They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men. ~ Plutarch,
189:What All The World Knows Water is the principle, or the element, of things. All things are water. ~ Plutarch,
190:Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life. ~ Plutarch,
191:If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair. ~ John D Agata,
192:The intimate and meditative form that Plutarch became known for was completely new in his day. ~ John D Agata,
193:Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse. ~ Plutarch,
194:I don’t even know why you bothered to put Finnick and me through training, Plutarch,” I say. ~ Suzanne Collins,
195:It is the admirer of himself, and not the admirer of virtue, that thinks himself superior to others. ~ Plutarch,
196:The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever. ~ Plutarch,
197:The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting. ~ Plutarch,
198:For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. ~ Plutarch,
199:Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord. ~ Plutarch,
200:He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war. ~ Plutarch,
201:It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad. ~ Plutarch,
202:Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity. ~ Plutarch,
203:The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors. ~ Plutarch,
204:He who cheats with an oath acknowledges that he is afraid of his enemy, but that he thinks little of God. ~ Plutarch,
205:I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~ Plutarch,
206:Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are ~ Plutarch,
207:Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. ~ James Russell Lowell,
208:The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements. ~ Plutarch,
209:Plutarch (AD 46–120) estimated that Julius Caesar’s campaign in Gaul yielded at least a million slaves. ~ Rodney Stark,
210:The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches. ~ Plutarch,
211:The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through. ~ Plutarch,
212:The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. ~ Plutarch,
213:An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. —PLUTARCH I ~ Matthieu Ricard,
214:No necesito amigos que cambien cuando yo cambio y asientan cuando yo asiento. Mi sombra lo hace mucho mejor. ~ Plutarch,
215:An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” —Plutarch ~ Erik Brynjolfsson,
216:Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy. ~ Plutarch,
217:The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. —Plutarch Sayings of the Spartans ~ Steven Pressfield,
218:Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. ~ Plutarch,
219:The myth is nothing but the reflection of a higher truth, which directs human thought in a perceptible course. ~ Plutarch,
220:We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things. ~ Plutarch,
221:A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service. ~ Plutarch,
222:I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example. ~ John D Agata,
223:It was Plutarch, you know, and nothing intrinsically American that prevented George Washington being a King... ~ H G Wells,
224:Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield
themselves up when taken little by little. ~ Plutarch,
225:must not trouble the gods with our affairs; they take no heed of our angers and disputes."Plutarch.] ~ Michel de Montaigne,
226:Remember what Simonides said, that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken. ~ Plutarch,
227:Thus ambitious spirits in a commonwealth, when they transgress their bounds, are apt to do more harm than good. ~ Plutarch,
228:When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish. ~ Plutarch,
229:I don't need a friend who change when I change, who nod when I nod. This is something than my own shadow can do. ~ Plutarch,
230:Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man. ~ Plutarch,
231:The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits. ~ Plutarch,
232:When one ceases to gain, one begins to lose. What matters is not to advance quickly, but to be always advancing. ~ Plutarch,
233:As Plutarch finely expressed, “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. ~ Ryan Holiday,
234:Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty. ~ Plutarch,
235:The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them. ~ Plutarch,
236:We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away. ~ Plutarch,
237:After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: "I came, I saw, I conquered. ~ Plutarch,
238:Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!" ~ Plutarch,
239:Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale. ~ Plutarch,
240:I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."

[As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment] ~ Socrates,
241:Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly. ~ Plutarch,
242:God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine. ~ Plutarch,
243:I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician. ~ Plutarch,
244:we should probably keep that up for appearances’ sake on camera,” says Plutarch. “Off camera, he’s all yours. ~ Suzanne Collins,
245:All beyond this is portentous and fabulous, inhabited by poets and mythologers, and there is nothing true or certain. ~ Plutarch,
246:All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~ Plutarch,
247:Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils. ~ Plutarch,
248:Even a nod from a person who is esteemed is of more force than a thousand arguments or studied sentences from others. ~ Plutarch,
249:if the “Know thyself” of the oracle were an easy thing for every man, it would not be held to be a divine injunction. ~ Plutarch,
250:It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension. ~ Plutarch,
251:[It was] better to set up a monarchy themselves than to suffer a sedition to continue that must certainly end in one. ~ Plutarch,
252:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ Plutarch,
253:The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of superstition. ~ Plutarch,
254:All men, while they are awake, are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~ Plutarch,
255:Grief is like a physical pain which must be allowed to subside somewhat on its own before medical treatment is applied. ~ Plutarch,
256:Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead. ~ Plutarch,
257:Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less. ~ Plutarch,
258:To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days ~ Plutarch,
259:Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit." ~ Plutarch,
260:To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days. ~ Plutarch,
261:We had to save you because you're the mockingjay, Katniss," says Plutarch. "While you live, the revolution lives. ~ Suzanne Collins,
262:We had to save you because you’re the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives. ~ Suzanne Collins,
263:When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.' ~ Plutarch,
264:Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real ~ Plutarch,
265:...To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage ~ Plutarch,
266:Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce. ~ Plutarch,
267:Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless. ~ Plutarch,
268:Pittacus said, "Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only". ~ Plutarch,
269:It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration. ~ Plutarch,
270:Our nature holds so much envy and malice that our pleasure in our own advantages is not so great as our distress at others'. ~ Plutarch,
271:A soldier told Pelopidas, "We are fallen among the enemies." Said he, "How are we fallen among them more than they among us?" ~ Plutarch,
272:Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say. ~ Plutarch,
273:But a man cannot by writing a bill of divorce to his vice get rid of all trouble at once, and enjoy tranquillity by living apart. ~ Plutarch,
274: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,
275:A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself. ~ Plutarch,
276:As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them. ~ Plutarch,
277:Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. ~ Plutarch,
278:A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it." ~ Plutarch,
279:Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. ~ Plutarch,
280:Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast. ~ Plutarch,
281:Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous. ~ Plutarch,
282:It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt. ~ Plutarch,
283:Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable. ~ Plutarch,
284:To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting. ~ Plutarch,
285:When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion. ~ Plutarch,
286:Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping. ~ Plutarch,
287:Şayet yaşam ya da düşünme tarzında yüksek standartlara ulaşamıyorsak, bu vatanımızın küçüklüğüyle değil, kişisel yetersizlikle alakalıdır. ~ Plutarch,
288:Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs. ~ Plutarch,
289:Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm? Is it that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves? ~ Plutarch,
290:Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself. ~ Plutarch,
291:Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment. ~ Plutarch,
292:Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature. ~ Plutarch,
293:Plutarch’s reflection that we don’t “so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience [we have] of things. ~ Ryan Holiday,
294:When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue. ~ Plutarch,
295:Grief is natural; the absence of all feeling is undesirable, but moderation in grief should be observed, as in the face of all good or evil. ~ Plutarch,
296:To make no mistake is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future. Plutarch ~ Harvey Karp,
297:I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky. ~ John D Agata,
298:There are two sentences inscribed upon the Ancient oracle... "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much"; and upon these all other precepts depend. ~ Plutarch,
299:One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No. ~ Plutarch,
300:So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence. ~ Plutarch,
301:Let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted. ~ Plutarch,
302:They insist upon the shaving of the moustache, I think, in order that they may accustom the young men to obedience in the most trifling matters. ~ Plutarch,
303:Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does. ~ Plutarch,
304:In Springtime, O Dionysos,
To thy holy temple come,
To Elis with thy Graces,
Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,
Noble Bull, Noble Bull ~ Plutarch,
305:Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position. ~ Plutarch,
306:There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice. ~ Plutarch,
307:Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation. ~ Plutarch,
308:Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs. ~ Plutarch,
309:I slept as the person in Plutarch that ran from Marathon to Athens without a pause would have slept if he had not fallen dead, the creature. ~ Patrick O Brian,
310:Those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new think they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds. ~ Plutarch,
311:What do you say, President?” asks Plutarch. “You could issue an official pardon, given the circumstances. The boy . . . he’s not even of age. ~ Suzanne Collins,
312:For man is a plant, not fixed in the earth, nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising as it were from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven. ~ Plutarch,
313:Demosthenes told Phocion, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses." ~ Plutarch,
314:The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing. ~ Plutarch,
315:Even those virtues which nature had denied him were imitated by him so successfully that he won more confidence than those who actually possessed them. ~ Plutarch,
316: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,
317:As bees extract honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so sensible men often get advantage and profit from the most awkward circumstances. ~ Plutarch,
318:Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. ~ Plutarch,
319:The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him. ~ Plutarch,
320:To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice. ~ Plutarch,
321:What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel ~ Plutarch,
322:When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. (Technically a misquote, but I like the misquote better) ~ Plutarch,
323:Of course you are. The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren't," I say. "And then we were very disposable - right, Plutarch? ~ Suzanne Collins,
324:A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can." ~ Plutarch,
325:Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land. ~ Plutarch,
326:Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that "It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece. ~ Plutarch,
327:When asked by a woman from Attica:'Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?', she said: 'Because we are the only ones who give birth to men. ~ Plutarch,
328:The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things. ~ Plutarch,
329:Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior. ~ Plutarch,
330:Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, "My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour. ~ Plutarch,
331: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. ~ Plutarch,
332:There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it. ~ Plutarch,
333:When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief. ~ Plutarch,
334:A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else. ~ Plutarch,
335:It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else. ~ Plutarch,
336:Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, "She can choose best," and so took both away with him. ~ Plutarch,
337:page 212:
let me be far from the battle at Thermodon
Watching if from high in the clouds, like an eagle.
The vanquished weep, and the victor has perished. ~ Plutarch,
338:Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people, he turned to his friend and said, "Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other?" ~ Plutarch,
339:Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, 'He, Sir, that is the least like you'. ~ Plutarch,
340:Demosthenes, when taunted by Pytheas that all his arguments "smelled of the lamp," replied, "Yes, but your lamp and mine, my friend, do not witness the same labours. ~ Plutarch,
341:If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. ~ Plutarch,
342: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,
343:Another Spartan, when he saw men sitting on stools in a lavatory, declared: "May I never sit where it is impossible for me to get up and offer my seat to an older man. ~ Plutarch,
344:Archimedes 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,
345:But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that. ~ Plutarch,
346:[The Spartans] should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves. ~ Plutarch,
347:Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron. ~ Plutarch,
348:If it encourages more writings of the same kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives fit to be written, it will be worth all Plutarch’s Lives put together. ~ Various,
349:The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations. ~ Plutarch,
350:A remorseful change of mind renders even a noble action base, whereas the determination which is grounded on knowledge and reason cannot change even if its actions fail. ~ Plutarch,
351:In whatsoever countrey men are bred
(I know not by what sweetnesse of it led),
They nourish in their minds a glad desire,
Unto their native homes for to retire, ~ Plutarch,
352:Haymitch? Not able to face something? Wanted a day off, more likely,” I say. “I think his actual words were ‘I couldn’t face it without a bottle,’ ” says Plutarch. ~ Suzanne Collins,
353:But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. ~ Plutarch,
354:The 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,
355:They died,but not as lavish as their blood,
Or thinking death itself was simply good;
Their wishes neither were to live nor die,
But to do both alike commendably. ~ Plutarch,
356: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,
357:A man must have a less than ordinary share of sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate. ~ Plutarch,
358:In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. ~ Plutarch,
359:When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living.' ~ Plutarch,
360:For though all persons are equally subject to the caprice of fortune, yet all good men have one advantage she cannot deny, which is this, to act reasonably under misfortunes. ~ Plutarch,
361:Plutarch further asserts that the Greeks recognized in Osiris the same person whom they revered under the names of Dionysos and Bacchus. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages,
362:Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it. ~ Plutarch,
363:Even if your life be bad do not live unknown, but be known, reform, repent; if you have virtue, be not utterly useless in life; if you are vicious, do not continue unreformed. ~ Plutarch,
364:If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect. ~ Plutarch,
365:The soul of man... is a portion or a copy of the soul of the Universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the Universe. ~ Plutarch,
366:In vain are you rich if you do not quell your passions; if an insatiable cupidity eats you up, if you are the prey of fears and anxieties, of what use to you is your opulence?. ~ Plutarch,
367: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,
368:A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic." ~ Plutarch,
369:Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage. ~ Plutarch,
370:We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. ~ Plutarch,
371:Being consulted again whether it were requisite to enclose the city with a wall, [Lycurgus] sent them word, 'The city is well fortified which hath a wall of men instead of brick'. ~ Plutarch,
372:is to make them grow tall. For it contributes to height of stature when the vitality is not impeded and hindered by a mass of nourishment which forces it into thickness and width, ~ Plutarch,
373:Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied. ~ Plutarch,
374:Politics is not like an ocean voyage or a military campaign... something which leaves off as soon as reached. It is not a public chore to be gotten over with. It is a way of life. ~ Plutarch,
375:To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you. ~ Plutarch,
376:And what Plutarch taught them is this: Heroes care. True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn’t about strength, or boldness, or even courage. It’s about compassion. ~ Christopher McDougall,
377:Small, therefore, can we think the progress we have made, as long as our admiration for those who have done noble things is barren, and does not of itself incite us to imitate them. ~ Plutarch,
378:The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater. ~ Plutarch,
379:The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him. ~ Plutarch,
380:What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good. ~ Plutarch,
381:He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." ["Delenda est Carthago."] ~ Plutarch,
382:It’s a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ Plutarch,
383:That which is chiefly the office of a general, to force the enemy into fighting when he finds himself the stronger, and to avoid being driven into it himself when he is the weaker... ~ Plutarch,
384:To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing. ~ Plutarch,
385:It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ Plutarch,
386:Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large. ~ Plutarch,
387:When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets. ~ Plutarch,
388:When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action. ~ Plutarch,
389: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,
390:He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it. ~ Plutarch,
391:Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors? ~ Plutarch,
392:For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. ~ Plutarch,
393:For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words. ~ Plutarch,
394:Though the natural weakness of her body hinders her from doing what men can perform, she has a mind as valiant and as active for the good of her country as the best of us. - Plutarch ~ Stephanie Dray,
395:History of science is a relay race, my painter friend. Copernicus took over his flag from Aristarchus, from Cicero, from Plutarch; and Galileo took that flag over from Copernicus. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
396:Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring? ~ Plutarch,
397:Cato 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,
398:In fact Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to obey a wife's authority, for by the time he met her he had already been quite broken in and schooled to accept the way of women. ~ Plutarch,
399:Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns, for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. ~ Plutarch,
400:The Roman historian Plutarch estimated that the civilized Romans under Julius Caesar, in his decade-long campaign in Gaul, destroyed 800 towns and villages and enslaved 3 million people. ~ Mark Kurlansky,
401:The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants. ~ Plutarch,
402:For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it. ~ Plutarch,
403:Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice, the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false display. ~ Plutarch,
404:If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business. ~ Plutarch,
405:Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them. ~ Plutarch,
406: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,
407:For kings indeed we have, who wear the marks and assume the titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their subjects. ~ Plutarch,
408:They should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man. ~ Plutarch,
409:He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good ~ Plutarch,
410:It is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper. ~ Plutarch,
411:Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action. ~ Plutarch,
412:The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy. ~ Plutarch,
413:Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that—if Herodotus can be believed—was “unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats. ~ Stacy Schiff,
414:There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither. ~ Plutarch,
415:Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied. ~ Plutarch,
416:For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. ~ Plutarch,
417:If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well. ~ Plutarch,
418:In der Nacht waren sie der Gegenstand seiner Träume, und während des Tages trieb ihn der Eifer, seinem Vorbild ähnlich zu werden, hinaus und stachelte ihn zu dem Vorsatz an, die gleichen Taten zu verrichten. ~ Plutarch,
419:Is it from without that there can come to a man the sweetness and the charm of his life? Is it not rather from the wisdom of his virtues that flow as from a happy source his real pleasures and his real joys? ~ Plutarch,
420:Since, during storms, flames leap from the humid vapors and dark clouds emit deafening noises, is it surprising the lightning, when it strikes the ground, gives rise to truffles, which do not resemble plants? ~ Plutarch,
421:In a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer. ~ Plutarch,
422:So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men; ~ Plutarch,
423:After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws. ~ Plutarch,
424:I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shaksepeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
425:If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax ~ Plutarch,
426:Thus it is plain that faults that are evident to the senses, gross and corporal, or otherwise notorious to the world, we know by our enemies sooner than by our friends and familiars. PLUTARCH, C. A.D. 46-120 ~ Robert Greene,
427:Why don't I just pretend I'm on camera, Plutarch?" I say. "Yes! Perfect. One is always much braver with an audience," he says. "Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!" It's all I can do not to slap him. ~ Suzanne Collins,
428:Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me. ~ Plutarch,
429:You must have learned principles so firmly that when your desires, your appetites or your fears awaken like barking dogs, the logos will speak with the voice of a master who silences the dogs by a single command. ~ Plutarch,
430:Even though I don't ask, Plutarch gives me cheerful updates on the phone like "Good news, Katniss! I think we've almost got him convinced you're not a mutt!" Or "Today he was allowed to feed himself pudding! ~ Suzanne Collins,
431:To make an action honorable, it ought to be agreeable to the age, and other circumstances of the person; since it is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad. ~ Plutarch,
432:I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.” “You ~ Alexandre Dumas,
433:Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
434:Why don't I just pretend I'm on camera, Plutarch?" I say.
"Yes! Perfect. One is always much braver with an audience," he says. "Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!"
It's all I can do not to slap him. ~ Suzanne Collins,
435:I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, "Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow. ~ Plutarch,
436:The art of wise administration consist in making certain concessions and granting that which will please the people, while demanding in return an obedience and cooperation which will benefit the whole community. p235-236 ~ Plutarch,
437:When someone blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his vindication 'He who knows how to speak, knows also when'. ~ Plutarch,
438:Lycurgus, who ordered that a great piece of money should be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no discourse to be current which did not contain in few words a great deal of useful and curious sense. ~ Plutarch,
439:The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best. ~ Plutarch,
440:As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity. ~ Plutarch,
441:Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy. ~ Laurence Sterne,
442:So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us. ~ Plutarch,
443:Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm of Antigonus. "That," said he, "is too little for a king to give." "Why, then," said the other, "give me a talent." "And that," said he, "is too much for a Cynic (or, for a dog) to receive." ~ Plutarch,
444:Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof. ~ Plutarch,
445:Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer. ~ Plutarch,
446:Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man's self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger. ~ Plutarch,
447:take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful. ~ Plutarch,
448:It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter. ~ Plutarch,
449:The key to the whole problem of this ancient Mystery-Institution was given by Plutarch when he wrote: ‘At the moment of death the soul experiences the same impressions as those who are initiated into the great Mysteries.’ Scholars ~ Paul Brunton,
450:Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within. ~ Plutarch,
451:Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words. ~ Plutarch,
452:Though others before him had triumphed three times, Pompeius, by having gained his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and this the last over Asia, seemed in a manner to have brought the whole world into his three triumphs. ~ Plutarch,
453:Plutarch rushes to reassure me. "Oh, no, Katniss. Not your wedding. Finnick and Annie's. All you need to do is show up and pretend to be happy for them." "That's one of the few things I won't have to pretend, Plutarch," I tell him. ~ Suzanne Collins,
454:The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain. ~ Plutarch,
455:When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. ~ W Somerset Maugham,
456:Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost. ~ Plutarch,
457:Plutarch rushes to reassure me. "Oh, no, Katniss. Not your wedding. Finnick and Annie's. All you need to do is show up and pretend to be happy for them."
"That's one of the few things I won't have to pretend, Plutarch," I tell him. ~ Suzanne Collins,
458:As 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,
459:To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal. ~ Plutarch,
460:And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!". ~ Plutarch,
461:Pompey had fought brilliantly and in the end routed Caesar's whole force... but either he was unable to or else he feared to push on. Caesar [said] to his friends: 'Today the enemy would have won, if they had had a commander who was a winner.' ~ Plutarch,
462:And, to say truly, the greatest benefit that learning bringeth unto men is this: that it teacheth men that be rough and rude of nature, by compass and rule of reason, to be civil and courteous, and to like better the mean state than the higher. ~ Plutarch,
463:we ought not to let either our joy at their faults or our grief at their success be idle, but in either case we ought to reflect, how we may become better than them by avoiding their errors, and by imitating their virtues not come short of them. ~ Plutarch,
464:Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house. ~ Plutarch,
465:Whereas stories are fit for every place, reach to all persons, serve for all times, teach the living, revive the dead, so far excelling all other books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen’s lives, than to read it in Philosophers’ writings. ~ Plutarch,
466:When someone asked Demaratus why the Spartans disgrace those who throw away their shields but not those who abandon their breastplates or helmets, he said that they put the latter on for their own sakes but the shield for the sake of the whole line. ~ Plutarch,
467:A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. ~ Plutarch,
468:A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. ~ Plutarch,
469:It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die. ~ Plutarch,
470:Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. ~ Plutarch,
471:If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart. ~ Mortimer Adler,
472:If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart. ~ Mortimer J Adler,
473:Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own. ~ Plutarch,
474:For dealing with blessings which come to us from outside we need a firm foundation based on reason and education; without this foundation, people keep on seeking these blessings and heaping them up but can never satisfy the insatiable appetites of their souls. ~ Plutarch,
475:Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow Souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and look down upon the World with Contempt; but a truly noble and resolved Spirit appears greatest in Distress, and then becomes more bright and conspicuous. ~ Plutarch,
476:For lack of rules (which the undisciplined sector of the young call freedom) sets masters over one which are more tyrannical than the teachers and trainers familiar from childhood – these masters are the desires, when they have broken out of prison, so to speak. ~ Plutarch,
477:If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw. ~ Plutarch,
478:Nothing can produce so great a serenity of life as a mind free from guilt and kept untainted, not only from actions, but purposes that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted but also undisturbed. The fountain will run clear and unsullied. ~ Plutarch,
479:While in the case of his iron money, as I have explained, Lycurgus arranged for heavy weight to be matched by low value, he did the opposite for the currency of speech. Here he developed the technique of expressing a wide range of ideas in just a few, spare words. ~ Plutarch,
480:Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia, but declared at the trial that he knew nothing of what was alleged against her and Clodius. When asked why, in that case, he had divorced her, he replied: Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion. ~ Plutarch,
481:So they cut their hair short in front, that their enemies might not grasp it. And they say that Alexander of Macedon for the same reason ordered his generals to have the beards of the Macedonians shaved, because they were a convenient handle for the enemy to grasp. ~ Plutarch,
482:When I ask Plutarch about his absence, he just shakes his head and says, "He couldnt face it." "Haymitch? Not able to face something? Wanted a day off, more likely," I say. "I think his actual words were 'I couldn't face it without a bottle,'" says Plutarch. ~ Suzanne Collins,
483:It is not the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered; but very often an action of small note. An casual remark or joke shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles. ~ Plutarch,
484:Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen. ~ Plutarch,
485:Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind. ~ Plutarch,
486:Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes. ~ Plutarch,
487:Education and study, and the favours of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes. ~ Plutarch,
488:speeding in to blow us out of the sky? As we travel over District 12, I watch anxiously for signs of an attack, but nothing pursues us. After several minutes, when I hear an exchange between Plutarch and the pilot confirming that the airspace is clear, I begin to ~ Suzanne Collins,
489:When I ask Plutarch about his absence, he just shakes his head and says, "He couldnt face it."
"Haymitch? Not able to face something? Wanted a day off, more likely," I say.
"I think his actual words were 'I couldn't face it without a bottle,'" says Plutarch. ~ Suzanne Collins,
490:For lack of rules (which the undisciplined sector of the young call freedom) 3 sets masters over one which are more tyrannical [D] than the teachers and trainers familiar from childhood – these masters are the desires, when they have broken out of prison, so to speak. Just ~ Plutarch,
491:He (Cato) used to say that in all his life he never repented but of three things. The first was that he had trusted a woman with a secret; the second that he had gone by sea when he might have gone by land; and the third, that had passed one day without having a will by him. ~ Plutarch,
492:A 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,
493:Once being hard pressed in wrestling, and fearing to be thrown, he got the hand of his antagonist to his mouth, and bit it with all his force; and when the other loosed his hold presently, and said, "You bite, Alcibiades, like a woman." "No," replied he, "like a lion." Another ~ Plutarch,
494:When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them. ~ Plutarch,
495:When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings. ~ Plutarch,
496:These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act. ~ Plutarch,
497:[Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty. ~ Plutarch,
498:Plutarch's peers were writing "rhetorics," which were these dry philosophical treatises that made really broad gestures about life and death and fate. Plutarch stepped out of the stream to create an essayistic form that relied on a digressive structure and down to earth anecdotes. ~ John D Agata,
499:Anacharsis 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,
500:As to Caesar, when he was called upon, he gave no testimony against Clodius, nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said, He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be clear of such a crime, but of the very suspicion of it. ~ Plutarch,
501:Or is it that of all numbers nine is the first square from the odd and perfect triad, while eight is the first cube from the even dyad? Now a man should be four-square, eminent, and perfect; but a woman, like a cube, should be stable, domestic, and difficult to remove from her place. And ~ Plutarch,
502:Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment. ~ Plutarch,
503:Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune. ~ Plutarch,
504:We remember the Spartan ambassador who, being asked in whose name he had come, replied: ‘In the name of the State, if I succeed; if I fail, in my own.’ [See Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, Lives, tr. J. Langhorne and W. Langhorne (London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, nd [1898]), pp. 40–1: ~ Michael Oakeshott,
505:What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful; what but Will, if rightly ordered, prove productive and bring its fruit to maturity? What strength of body is there which will not lose its vigor and fall to decay by laziness, nice usage, and debauchery? ~ Plutarch,
506:Whenever Alexander heard Philip had taken any town of importance, or won any signal victory, instead of rejoicing at it altogether, he would tell his companions that his father would anticipate everything, and leave him and them no opportunities of performing great and illustrious actions. ~ Plutarch,
507:Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and gives them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune... ~ Plutarch,
508: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,
509:Others have seen the assassination as a useful reminder of the futility of such attempts at direct action. For what did it achieve? If the assassins had really wanted to quash the rise of one-man rule in Rome, if they wanted to kill the tyranny as well as the tyrant, they were strikingly unsuccessful. ~ Plutarch,
510:Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames! ~ Franz Grillparzer,
511:For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward. ~ Plutarch,
512:Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men. ~ Plutarch,
513:Lycurgus was of opinion that ornaments were so far from advantaging them in their counsels, that they were rather an hindrance, by diverting their attention from the business before them to statues and pictures, and roofs curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places amongst the other Greeks. ~ Plutarch,
514:Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one? ~ Plutarch,
515:As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. ~ Plutarch,
516:Poetry, architecture, music, philosophy and mathematics all intrigued him and he was patron of them all, surrounding himself with men of genius: the poet and satirist Juvenal, the architect Apollodorus, the historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Arrian, the writers Pliny the Younger, Pausanias and Plutarch. ~ Elizabeth Speller,
517:While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, "Come and get them. ~ Plutarch,
518:Being human and investigating the affairs of the gods is an extreme version of being tone-deaf and talking about music, or having never served in the army and talking about warfare: we resemble amateurs trying to use arguments from probability based on opinions and conjecture to unearth the ideas of experts. Given ~ Plutarch,
519:For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities. ~ Plutarch,
520:Ciascuna per la sua bellezza allora era immediatamente antica, oggi, dopo molto tempo, è recente, nuova e rigogliosa. Sulle opere di Pericle fiorisce come una giovinezza perenne, esse si conservano allo sguardo indenni nel tempo, quasi posseggano infuso un respiro sempre fresco e un'anima che non conosce vecchiezza. ~ Plutarch,
521:Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ William Blake,
522:For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made him resolute and firm in his opinions, and the boldness of his temper raised a sort of passion in him for surmounting difficulties; as if it were not enough to be always victorious in the field, unless places and seasons and nature herself submitted to him. ~ Plutarch,
523:It was natural for [Spartan women] to think and speak as Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done, when some foreign lady, as it would seem, told her that the women of Lacedaemon were the only women of the world who could rule men; 'With good reason,' she said, 'for we are the only women who bring forth men'. ~ Plutarch,
524:Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house." ~ Plutarch,
525:The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes. ~ Plutarch,
526:Plutarch
CHAERONEAN Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise;
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared,
(Their heroes written and their lives compared;)
But thou thyself could'st never write thine own;
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.
~ Agathias,
527:People like to say that Plutarch's is a really "personal" voice, but in truth Plutarch tells us very little about his life. His voice is personable but never personal. It feels intimate because he's addressing the world as we experience it, at this level, a human level, rather than way up here where very few of us live. ~ John D Agata,
528:It was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope, consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value. ~ Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia, 7D,
529:It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. ~ Plutarch,
530:Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed. ~ Plutarch,
531:Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers? ~ Plutarch,
532:Poverty is never dishonourable in itself, but only when it is a mark of sloth, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness. When, on the other hand, it is the handmaid of a sober, industrious, righteous, and brave man, who devotes all his powers to the service of the people, it is the sign of a lofty spirit that harbours no mean thoughts ~ Plutarch,
533:This vexed Theseus, and determining not to hold aloof, but to share the fortunes of the people, he came forward and offered himself without being drawn by lot. The people all admired his courage and patriotism, and Aegeus finding that his prayers and entreaties had no effect on his unalterable resolution, proceeded to choose the rest by lot. ~ Plutarch,
534:By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy. ~ Plutarch,
535:Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them, thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak. ~ Plutarch,
536:So it happens in political affairs; if the motions of rulers be constantly opposite and cross to the tempers and inclination of the people, they will be resented as arbitrary and harsh; as, on the other side, too much deference, or encouragement, as too often it has been, to popular faults and errors, is full of danger and ruinous consequences. ~ Plutarch,
537:He hastily calls Finnick and Haymitch over and they have a brief but intense conversation that I can see Haymitch isn’t happy with. Plutarch seems to win – Finnick’s pale but nodding his head by the end of it. As Finnick moves to take my seat before the camera, Haymitch tells him, “You don’t have to do this.” “Yes, I do. If it will help her. ~ Suzanne Collins,
538:[The Spartans] ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of childbearing. ~ Plutarch,
539:When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil. ~ Plutarch,
540:Such contentedness and change of view in regard to every kind of life does the infusion of reason bring about. When Alexander heard from Anaxarchus of the infinite number of worlds, he wept, and when his friends asked him what was the matter, he replied, "Is it not a matter for tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, I have not conquered one? ~ Plutarch,
541:For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium from the elite than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them. ~ Plutarch,
542:But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence. ~ Plutarch,
543:... man by nature is not a wild or unsocial creature, neither was he born so, but makes himself what he naturally is not, by vicious habit; and that again on the other side, he is civilized and grows gentle by a change of place, occupation, and manner of life, as beasts themselves that are wild by nature, become tame and tractable by housing and gentler usage... ~ Plutarch,
544:She hasn’t said this with any particular malice — quite the contrary, her words are very matter-of-fact. But my mouth still drops open in shock. “What?” “I think we should continue the current romance. A quick defection from Peeta could cause the audience to lose sympathy for her,” says Plutarch. “Especially since they think she’s pregnant with his child. ~ Suzanne Collins,
545:For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich. ~ Plutarch,
546:he says, “You know, you better put Buttercup on your list of demands, too. I don’t think the concept of useless pets is well known here.” “Oh, they’ll find him a job. Tattoo it on his paw every morning,” I say. But I make a mental note to include him for Prim’s sake. By the time we get to Command, Coin, Plutarch, and all their people have already assembled. ~ Suzanne Collins,
547:Next, to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar; and withal to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour, ere any flattering seducement or vain principle seize them wandering, some easy and delightful book of education would be read to them; whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses. ~ John Milton,
548:And it is said that extraordinary rains generally dash down after great battles, whether it is that some divine power drenches and hallows the ground with purifying waters from Heaven, or that the blood and putrefying matter send up a moist and heavy vapour which condenses the air, this being easily moved and readily changed to the highest degree by the slightest cause. ~ Plutarch,
549:Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?" I ask.
"Oh, not now. Now we're in a sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated," he says. "But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss. ~ Suzanne Collins,
550:She snags Gale, who’s in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him toward us. “Isn’t he handsome?” Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both, given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, “Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear. ~ Suzanne Collins,
551:Over time events trickle out of the minds of forgetful, thoughtless people, and so, since they retain and conserve nothing, the empty space within them, that should be filled with good things, is filled instead with hopes, so that they neglect the present and look to the future, despite the fact that fortune may yet foil the future, whereas the present cannot be taken away. ~ Plutarch,
552:Seeing the lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black; and he would often go out of doors, after his morning meal, without either shoes or tunic; not that he sought vain-glory from such novelties, but he would accustom himself to be ashamed only of what deserves shame, and to despise all other sorts of disgrace. ~ Plutarch,
553:think the Princess should read the New Testament both night and morning, and also certain selected portions of the Old Testament. She must become fully conversant with the gospels. She should, I believe also study Plutarch's Enchiridion, Seneca's Maxims, and of course Plato and Cicero.” He glanced at his friend. “I suggest that Sir Thomas More's Utopia would provide good reading. ~ Jean Plaidy,
554:By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?" What more valuable for the elevation of our own character? ~ Plutarch,
555:Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
556:...I suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish imagination that at bottom our State should be wise, sane, and dignified, that makes me think a country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private enterprise and open to the advances of any purchaser much be in a frankly hopeless condition. ~ H G Wells,
557:Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery, ~ Plutarch,
558:We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful. ~ Plutarch,
559:We stand in need of such reflections to comfort us for the loss of some illustrious characters, which in our eyes might have seemed the most worthy of the heavenly present. The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human natures. ~ Edward Gibbon,
560:... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science. ~ Plutarch,
561:You know what's amusing?
How people in this so-called American Liberty Movement constantly forward ideas as if nobody had ever thought of them before.
If any of these fucktards had ever read Pliny, Cicero, Plutarch or Suetonius, they would know that nearly all political ideas were old news by the time of the Emperor Caligula.
The American educational system is officially shit as far as I can tell. ~ Sienna McQuillen,
562:This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center." ~ Plutarch,
563:The first man . . . 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,
564:when he was ædile, he provided such a number of gladiators, that he entertained the people with three hundred and twenty single combats, and by his great liberality and magnificence in theatrical shows, in processions, and public feastings, he threw into the shade all the attempts that had been made before him, and gained so much upon the people, that every one was eager to find out new offices and new honors for him in return for his munificence. ~ Plutarch,
565:The vast majority of all the ancient Greek literature that has survived comes from this period of imperial rule. To give a sense of scale, the work of just one of these writers – Plutarch, the second-century CE biographer, philosopher, essayist and priest of the famous Greek oracle at Delphi – extends to as many modern pages as all the surviving work of the fifth century BCE put together, from the tragedies of Aeschylus to the history of Thucydides. ~ Mary Beard,
566:Whilst he was very young, he was a soldier in the expedition against Potidaea, where Socrates lodged in the same tent with him, and stood next him in battle. Once there happened a sharp skirmish, in which they both behaved with signal bravery; but Alcibiades receiving a wound, Socrates threw himself before him to defend him, and beyond any question saved him and his arms from the enemy, and so in all justice might have challenged the prize of valor. But ~ Plutarch,
567: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,
568:One of them, the philosopher Philostratus, summed up the idea by saying that the great athletes of the past “made war training for sport, and sport training for war.” Turning Spartan logic on its head, Plutarch even claimed that the Thebans at the great Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC defeated the Spartans because they had done more training at the palaestra; he also wrote that sport, wrestling specifically included, was an imitation and exercise of war. ~ Martin van Creveld,
569:Let the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,
570:But rituals turn us all into fucking idiots. Like those birds that sleep with their heads facing backwards because their ancestors slept with their heads under their wings. Plutarch says carrying new wives across thresholds is stupid because we don't remember that it refers to the rape of the Sabine women - and that's fucking Plutarch, two thousand years ago. We still draw the Reaper with a scythe. We should draw him driving a John Deere for Archer Daniels Midland. ~ Josh Bazell,
571:Numa forbade the Romans to revere an image of God which had the form of man or beast. Nor was there among them in this earlier time any painted or graven likeness of Deity, 8 but while for the first hundred and seventy years they were continually building temples and establishing sacred shrines, they made no statues in bodily form for them, convinced that it was impious to liken higher things to lower, and that it was impossible to apprehend Deity except by the intellect. ~ Plutarch,
572:It is a pity that the great dramatist did not select from Plutarch’s works some hero who took the side of the people, some Agis or Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the Gracchi. What a tragedy he might have based on the life of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the martyr in their cause! But the spirit which guided Schiller in the choice of William Tell for a hero was a stranger to Shakespeare’s heart, and its promptings would have met with no response there. ~ William Shakespeare,
573:It was for the most part by sacrifices, processions, and religious dances, which he himself appointed and conducted, and which mingled with their solemnity a diversion full of charm and a beneficent pleasure, that he won the people’s favour and tamed their fierce and warlike tempers. At times, also, by heralding to them vague terrors from the god, strange apparitions of divine beings and threatening voices, he would subdue and humble their minds by means of superstitious fears. ~ Plutarch,
574:Of the land which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbours, part they sold publicly, and turned the remainder into common; this common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and indigent, for which they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground. ~ Plutarch,
575:For it may happen to the commonwealth, as to the serpent in the fable, whose tail, rising in rebellion against the head, complained, as of a great grievance, that it was always forced to follow, and required that it should be permitted by turns to lead the way. And taking the command accordingly, it soon inflicted , by its senseless courses, mischiefs in abundance upon itself, while the head was torn and lacerated with following, contrary to nature, a guide that was deaf and blind. ~ Plutarch,
576:Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others, and no one ever heard him rehearse a speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, ‘Better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.’” —PLUTARCH, CATO THE YOUNGER, 4 ~ Ryan Holiday,
577:One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing. ~ J K Rowling,
578:It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. Or if, on the other hand, events are limited to the combinations of some finite number, then of necessity the same must often recur, and in the same sequence. ~ Plutarch,
579:Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth. ~ Plutarch,
580:Reading Plutarch, he lost awareness of the gap in time that divided them—much bigger than the gap between Montaigne and us. It does not matter, he wrote, whether a person one loves has been dead for fifteen hundred years or, like his own father at the time, eighteen years. Both are equally remote; both are equally close. Montaigne’s merging of favorite authors with his own father says a lot about how he read: he took up books as if they were people, and welcomed them into his family. ~ Sarah Bakewell,
581:So reason makes all sorts of life easy, and every change pleasant. Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds, and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: Do not you think it a matter worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one? But Crates with only his scrip and tattered cloak laughed out his life jocosely, as if he had been always at a festival. ~ Plutarch,
582:One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor, down which I ventured at the age of eighteen in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: 'What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality'.
That is an astonishing statement, and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing. ~ J K Rowling,
583:But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
584:You, on the other hand, have often been told that following God and listening to reason are identical; so bear in mind that for intelligent people the passage from childhood to adulthood is not an abandonment of rules, but a change of ruler: instead of someone [E] whose services are hired and bought, they accept in their lives the divine leadership of reason – and it is only those who follow reason who deserve to be regarded as free. For they alone live as they want, since they have learned to want only what is necessary; ~ Plutarch,
585:Cicero was the first who had any suspicions of his designs upon the government, and, as a good pilot is apprehensive of a storm when the sea is most smiling, saw the designing temper of the man through this disguise of good-humor and affability, and said, that in general, in all he did and undertook, he detected the ambition for absolute power, “but when I see his hair so carefully arranged, and observe him adjusting it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should enter into such a man’s thoughts to subvert the Roman state. ~ Plutarch,
586:Sertorius rose up and spoke to his army, “You see, fellow soldiers, that perseverance is more prevailing than violence, and that many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Assiduity and persistence are irresistible, and in time overthrow and destroy the greatest powers whatever. Time being the favorable friend and assistant of those who use their judgment to await his occasions, and the destructive enemy of those who are unseasonably urging and pressing forward. ~ Plutarch,
587:Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy. ~ Plutarch,
588:Like every man who appears at an epoch which is historical and rendered famous by his works, Jesus Christ has a history, a history which the church and the world possess, and which, surrounded by countless memorials, has at least the same authenticity as any other history formed in the same countries, amidst the same peoples and in the same times. As, then, if I would study the lives of Brutus and Cassius, I should calmly open Plutarch, I open the Gospel to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the same composure. ~ Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,
589:Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
590:I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice. …but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy. ~ Plutarch,
591:Nor had the cities of Sicily any trust in him, as they were in great distress, and greatly exasperated against those who pretended to lead armies to their succour, on account of the treachery of Kallippus and Pharax; who, one an Athenian and the other a Lacedaemonian, but both giving out that they were come to fight for freedom and to put down despotism, did so tyrannise themselves, that the reign of the despots in Sicily seemed to have been a golden age, and those who died in slavery were thought more happy than those who lived to see liberty. ~ Plutarch,
592:I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice.

…but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy. ~ Plutarch,
593:Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm. ~ Plutarch,
594:4. So reason makes all sorts of life easy, and every change pleasant. Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds, and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: Do not you think it a matter worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one? But Crates with only his scrip and tattered cloak laughed out his life jocosely, as if he had been always at a festival. The great power and command of Agamemnon gave him an equal disturbance: ~ Plutarch,
595:A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare . . . There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. ~ Plutarch,
596:Anaxagoras is said to have predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake, one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall down to earth; and he said that none of the stars was in its original position; for being of stone, and heavy, their shining light is caused by friction with the revolving aether, and they are forced along in fixed orbits by the whirling impulse which gave them their circular motion, and this was what prevented them from falling to our earth in the first place, when cold and heavy bodies were separated from universal matter. ~ Plutarch,
597:There is a story recorded about Geradas, a Spartiate of really ancient times, who when asked by a foreigner what their punishment for adulterers was, said: "There is no adulterer among us, stranger." When the latter replied: "But what if there should be one?", Geradas' answer was: "His fine would be a great bull which bends over Mount Taygetus to Drink from the Eurotas." The foreigner was amazed at this and said: "But how could there be a bull of such size?" At which Geradas laughed and said: "But how could there be an adulterer at Sparta?" This, then, concludes my investigation of their marriages. ~ Plutarch,
598:Plutarch clearly notes that her beauty “was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it”. It was rather the “contact of her presence, if you lived with her, that was irresistible”. Her personality and manner, he insists, were no less than “bewitching”. Time has done better than fail to wither Cleopatra’s case; it has improved upon her allure. She came into her looks only years later. By the third century AD she would be described as “striking”, exquisite in appearance. By the Middle Ages, she was “famous for nothing but her beauty”. ~ Stacy Schiff,
599:If authority be required, let us appeal to Plutarch, the prince of ancient biographers. [Greek: Oute tais epiphanestatais praxesi pantos enesti daelosis aretaes ae kakias, alla pragma brachu pollakis, kai raema, kai paidia tis emphasin aethous epoiaesen mallon ae machai murionekroi, kai parataxeis ai megistai, kai poliorkiai poleon.] Nor is it always in the most distinguished atchievements that men’s virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person’s real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles. ~ Samuel Johnson,
600:Now at the time of which I was speaking, as the voters were inscribing their ostraka [to determine which politician would be expelled from the city], it is said that an unlettered and utterly boorish fellow handed his ostrakon to Aristides, whom he took to be one of the ordinary crowd, and asked him to write Aristides on it. He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. “None whatever,” was the answer, “I don’t even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called ‘The Just.’ ” On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back. ~ Plutarch,
601:But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practise and exercise. We are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice, and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation which we look at, but by the statement of the fact creates a moral purpose which we form. ~ Plutarch,
602:But more than this - not even, after your victims have been killed, will you eat them just as they are from the slaughter-house. You boil, roast, and altogether metamorphose them by fire and condiments. You entirely alter and disguise the murdered animal by use of ten thousand sweet herbs and spices, that your natural taste may be deceived and be prepared to take the unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was that of the Spartan who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to dress. When the latter asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar, he replied, 'Why, if I had all these things I should not have bought the fish! ~ Plutarch,
603:And that which is often said of the volume and power of the human voice was then apparent to the eye. For ravens which chanced to be flying overhead fell down into the stadium. The cause of this was the rupture of the air; for when the voice is borne aloft loud and strong, the air is rent asunder by it and will not support flying creatures, but lets them fall, as if they were over a vacuum, unless, indeed, they are transfixed by a sort of blow, as of a weapon, and fall down dead. It is possible, too, that in such cases there is a whirling motion of the air, which becomes like a waterspout at sea with a refluent flow of the surges caused by their very volume. ~ Plutarch,
604:The two armies separated; and we are told that Pyrrhus said to one who was congratulating him on his victory, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” 10 For he had lost a great part of the forces with which he came, and all his friends and generals except a few; moreover, he had no others whom he could summon from home, and he saw that his allies in Italy were becoming indifferent, while the army of the Romans, as if from a fountain gushing forth indoors, was easily and speedily filled up again, and they did not lose courage in defeat, nay, their wrath gave them all the more vigour and determination for the war. ~ Plutarch,
605:As 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, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. ~ Plutarch,
606:Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career. 8
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. 9
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. ~ T S Eliot,
607:But if any man undertake to write a history, that has to be collected from materials gathered by observation and the reading of works not easy to be got in all places, nor written always in his own language, but many of them foreign and dispersed in other hands, for him, undoubtedly, it is in the first place and above all things most necessary, to reside in some city of good note, addicted to liberal arts, and populous; where he may have plenty of all sorts of books, and upon inquiry may hear and inform himself of such particulars as, having escaped the pens of writers, are more faithfully preserved in the memories of men, lest his work be deficient in many things, even those which it can least dispense with. ~ Plutarch,
608:And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others. ~ Plutarch,
609:Cæsar is said to have been admirably fitted by nature to make a great statesman and orator, and to have taken such pains to improve his genius this way, that without dispute he might challenge the second place. More he did not aim at, as choosing to be first rather amongst men of arms and power, and, therefore, never rose to that height of eloquence to which nature would have carried him, his attention being diverted to those expeditions and designs, which at length gained him the empire. And he himself, in his answer to Cicero’s panegyric on Cato, desires his reader not to compare the plain discourse of a soldier with the harangues of an orator who had not only fine parts, but had employed his life in this study. ~ Plutarch,
610:The consequences of this affliction are physical neglect and an aversion to oiling and bathing the body and to other aspects of the daily regimen, when exactly the opposite should happen: purely mental suffering ought to be helped by physical fitness. Mental distress abates and subsides to a great extent when it is dispersed in physical calm, as waves subside in fair weather, but if as a result [B] of a bad regimen the body becomes sordid and foul and transmits to the mind nothing benign or beneficial, but only the harsh and unpleasant fumes of pain and distress, then even those who desire it find that recovery becomes hard to achieve. These are the kinds of disorders that take possession of the mind when it is treated so badly. ~ Plutarch,
611:Cæsar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good. ~ Plutarch,
612:one who, though he never digress to read a Lecture, Moral or Political, upon his own Text, nor enter into men’s hearts, further than the Actions themselves evidently guide him…filleth his Narrations with that choice of matter, and ordereth them with that Judgement, and with such perspicuity and efficacy expresseth himself that (as Plutarch saith) he maketh his Auditor a Spectator. For he setteth his Reader in the Assemblies of the People, and in their Senates, at their debating; in the Streets, at their Seditions; and in the Field, at their Battels.

Quoted by Shelby Foote in his The Civil War: A Narrative – Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian, Bibliographical Note, from Thomas Hobbes’ Forward to Hobbes’ translation of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides ~ Thomas Hobbes,
613:The heliocentric system itself admits of an obvious symbolism, since it identifies the centre of the world with the source of light. Its rediscovery by Copernicus (For it is not a case of an unprecedented discovery. Copernicus himself refers to Nicetas of Syracuse as also to certain quotations in Plutarch) however, produced no new spiritual vision of the world; rather it was comparable to the popularization of an esoteric truth. The heliocentric system had no common measure with the subjective experiences of people; in it man had no organic place. Instead of helping the human mind to go beyond itself and to consider things in terms of the immensity of the cosmos, it only encouraged a materialistic Prometheanism which, far from being superhuman, ended by becoming inhuman. ~ Titus Burckhardt,
614:Menestheus, the son of Peteus, grandson of Orneus, and the great-grandson to Erechtheus, the first man that is recorded to have affected popularity and ingratiated himself with the multitude, stirred up and exasperated the most eminent men of the city, who had long borne a secret grudge to Theseus, conceiving that he had robbed them of their several little kingdoms and lordships, and, having pent them all up in one city, was using them as his subjects and slaves. He put also the meaner people into commotion, telling them, that, deluded with a mere dream of liberty, though indeed they were deprived both of that and of their proper homes and religious usages, instead of many good and gracious kings of their own, they had given themselves up to be lorded over by a new-comer and a stranger. ~ Plutarch,
615:For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them. They fear the bold man, and mistrust the clever man, and moreover think them rather beholding to their natural complexion, than to any goodness of their will, for these excellences; they look upon valour as a certain natural strength of the mind, and wisdom as a constitutional acuteness; whereas a man has it in his power to be just, if he have but the will to be so, and therefore injustice is thought the most dishonourable, because it is least excusable. ~ Plutarch,
616:It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent piper, “It may be so,” said he, “but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper.” And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skilfully, “Are you not ashamed, son, to play so well?” For it is enough for a king or prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill. He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. ~ Plutarch,
617:According to St. Augustine, the left hand represented the temporal, the mortal, and the bodily, as opposed to the right, which stood for “God, eternity, the years of God which fail not.”25 For centuries the preference for the right hand over the left governed how people fished, ploughed fields, twisted rope, and ate their meals. The Greeks and Romans, for example, always reclined on the left side, propped on the left elbow, leaving the right hand free for the business of eating and drinking. Plutarch noted that parents taught children to eat right-handed from a young age, and “if they do put forth the left hand, at once we correct them.”26 The prejudice against the left hand persisted during the Renaissance, with parents freeing a child’s right hand from its swaddling clothes to ensure right-handedness at the dinner table as well as at the writing desk. ~ Ross King,
618:In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that it is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare,
Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet; I mention only the most important …’

I have to admit that my historical work is my favourite occupation. When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
619:Military expediency aside, how did the new emperor appear to his subjects? Experience, inclination and natural intelligence had made him a polymath, though the demands of his role as emperor, and the infinite resources available to him, left him open to accusations of dilettantism. This charge was unfair; he was unusual in that he genuinely wanted to become adept in many areas himself, rather than simply be served or amused by the ability of others. Throughout his reign his understanding was gained either by direct observation or by the development of skills that he admired in others. Poetry, architecture, music, philosophy and mathematics all intrigued him and he was patron of them all, surrounding himself with men of genius: the poet and satirist Juvenal, the architect Apollodorus, the historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Arrian, the writers Pliny the Younger, Pausanias and Plutarch. ~ Elizabeth Speller,
620:For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism. ~ Plutarch,
621:For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. 3 There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. 4 Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect. ~ Plutarch,
622:A better-constituted boy would certainly have profited under my intelligent tutors, with their scientific apparatus; and would, doubtless, have found the phenomena of electricity and magnetism as fascinating as I was, every Thursday, assured they were. As it was, I could have paired off, for ignorance of whatever was taught me, with the worst Latin scholar that was ever turned out of a classical academy. I read Plutarch, and Shakespeare, and Don Quixote by the sly, and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts, while my tutor was assuring me that "an improved man, as distinguished from an ignorant one, was a man who knew the reason why water ran downhill." I had no desire to be this improved man; I was glad of the running water; I could watch it and listen to it gurgling among the pebbles and bathing the bright green water-plants, by the hour together. I did not want to know why it ran; I had perfect confidence that there were good reasons for what was so very beautiful. ("The Lifted Veil") ~ George Eliot,
623:Come, O King Of The Lacedaimonians
Kratisiklia didn't deign to allow
the people to see her weeping and grieving:
she walked in dignity and in silence.
Her calm face betrayed nothing
of her sorrow and her agony.
But even so, for a moment she couldn't hold back:
before she went aboard the detestable ship for Alexandria
she took her son to Poseidon's temple,
and once they were alone
she embraced him tenderly and kissed him
(he was "in great distress," says Plutarch, "badly
shaken").
But her strong character struggled through;
regaining her poise, the magnificent woman
said to Kleomenis: "Come, O King of the Lacedaimonians,
when we go outside
let no one see us weeping
or behaving in any way unworthy of Sparta.
At least this is still in our power;
what lies ahead is in the hands of the gods."
And she boarded the ship, going toward whatever lay "in the
hands of the gods."
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
624:In this city [Tingis] the Libyans say that Antaeus is buried; and Sertorius had his tomb dug open, the great size of which made him disbelieve the Barbarians. But when he came upon the body and found it to be sixty cubits long, as they tell us, he was dumbfounded, and after performing a sacrifice filled up the tomb again, and joined in magnifying its traditions and honours. Now, the people of Tingis have a myth that after the death of Antaeus, his wife, Tinga, consorted with Heracles, and that Sophax was the fruit of this union, who became king of the country and named a city which he founded after his mother; also that Sophax had a son, Diodorus, to whom many of the Libyan peoples became subject, since he had a Greek army composed of the Olbians and Mycenaeans who were settled in those parts by Heracles. But this tale must be ascribed to a desire to gratify Juba, of all kings the most devoted to historical enquiry; for his ancestors are said to have been descendants of Sophax and Diodorus. [The Life of Sertorius] ~ Plutarch,
625:Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle, the philosopher, observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of persuasiveness"; and the absence of this in the character of Marcius made all his great actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those whom they benifited: pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls it, of solitude, made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades, on the contrary, possessed to treat every one in the way most agreeable to him, we cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with the most exuberant favour and honour; his very errors, at time, being accompanied by something of grace and felicity. And so in spite of great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a place which his great services had made his due. The one, in spite of the harm he occasioned, could not make himself hated, nor the other, with all the admiration he attracted, succeed in being beloved by his countrymen. ~ Plutarch,
626:The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body”19—which, for its individual maintenance and its survival as the life of the species needs the company of others. That individual maintenance should be the task of the man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions, the labor of man to provide nourishment and the labor of the woman in giving birth, were subject to the same urgency of life. Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the polis. ~ Hannah Arendt,
627:We must encourage [each other] once we have grasped the basic points to interconnecting everything else on our own, to use memory to guide our original thinking, and to accept what someone else says as a starting point, a seed to be nourished and grown. For 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. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind. ~ Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures.,
628:One can even find the trident (as big as, El Candelabro, which is a well-known prehistoric geoglyph found on the northern face of the Paracas Peninsula) as a pre-Incan ritual object which were created by the Sun-worshipping priests of Paracas. In India, it is linked to the Hindu "trident-bearer" Shiva, spouse of the skull-bearing (skull-topped staff, khatvanga) goddess Kali. The Egyptians (according to Plutarch) even offered incense to the Sun three times every day marking thereby the perpetuity of the Sun worship religion among them. All this points to a major unified Sun religion across the globe which were physically expressed on royalty through elongated skulls. This is a rebel-religion that breaks loose from the mandate imposed on it from the higher authority. Even the [form of the Buddhist khatvanga was derived from the emblematic staff of the early Indian Shaivite yogins, known as kapalikas or 'skull-bearers'. The kapalikas were originally miscreants who had been sentenced to a twelve-year term of penance for the crime of inadvertently killing a Brahmin]. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,
629:The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning. ~ Edward Gibbon,
630:I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career.
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. ~ T S Eliot,
631:A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. ~ Plutarch,
632:Some thirty-six years after the death of Leonidas, King Agesilaus of Sparta, as Plutarch recounts, showed that the essential Spartan spirit, which distinguished her citizens from all others in Greece, still had not changed. At that time there was a war between a coalition led by Athens against Sparta and her allies. The latter had been complaining to Agesilaus that it was they who provided the bulk of the army. Agesilaus, accordingly, called a council meeting at which all the Spartan allies sat down on one side and the Spartans on the other. The king then told a herald to proclaim that all the potters among the allies and the Spartans should stand up. After this the herald called on the blacksmiths, the masons, and the carpenters to do likewise; and so he went on through all the crafts and trades. By the end of the herald’s recital almost every single man among the allies had risen to his feet. But not a Spartan had moved. The laws of Lycurgus still obtained. The king laughed and turned to his allies, remarking: ‘You see, my friends, how many more soldiers we send out than you do.’ The whole Spartan attitude is contained in those words. ~ Ernle Bradford,
633:It's impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this one sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta. Result in his torture. But not his death, no, nothing so merciful as that. Snow will ensure that his life is much more worse than death.

"Cut," I hear Cressida say quietly.

"What's wrong with her?" Plutarch says under his breath.

"She's figured out how Snow's using Peeta," says Finnick.

There's something like a collective sigh of regret from that semicircle of people spread out before me. Because I know this now. Because there will never be a way for me to not know this again. Because, beyond the military disadvantage losing a entails, I am broken.

Several sets of arms would embrace me. But in the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too. I reach out for him and say something like his name and he's there, holding me and patting my back. "It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He sits me on a length of broken marble pillar and keeps an arm around me while I sob.

"I can't do this anymore," I say.

"I know," he says. ~ Suzanne Collins,
634:The Greeks thought of culture as character. It was predictability across scale: the behavior of a city, a state, or a people in small things, big things, and those in between. 32 Knowing who they were and what they wanted, the Spartans were wholly predictable. They saw no need to change themselves or anyone else. The Athenians’ strategy of walling their cities, however, had reshaped their character, obliging them restlessly to roam the world. Because they had changed, they would have to change others—that’s what having an empire means—but how many, to what extent, and by what means? No one, not even Pericles, could easily say. Pericles was not Xerxes. “I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices,” he admitted as war approached. Knowing that the Athenians’ empire could not expand indefinitely, Pericles “unsparingly pruned and cut down their ever busy fancies,” Plutarch explained, “supposing it would be quite enough for them to do, if they could keep the [Spartans] in check.” 33 But as Pericles’ agents acknowledged before the Spartan assembly, allowing the empire the equality he celebrated within the city could cause contraction, perhaps even collapse. ~ John Lewis Gaddis,
635:extracts from a six-volume set of Plutarch’s Lives. Thereafter, Hamilton always interpreted politics as an epic tale from Plutarch of lust and greed and people plotting for power. Since his political theory was rooted in his study of human nature, he took special delight in Plutarch’s biographical sketches. And he carefully noted the creation of senates, priesthoods, and other elite bodies that governed the lives of the people. Hamilton was already interested in the checks and balances that enabled a government to tread a middle path between despotism and anarchy. From the life of Lycurgus, he noted: Among the many alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the kings in matters of consequence did . . . foster and qualify the imperious and fiery genius of monarchy by constantly restraining it within the bounds of equity and moderation. For the state before had no firm basis to stand upon, leaning sometimes towards an absolute monarchy and sometimes towards a pure democracy. But this establishment of the senate was to the commonwealth what the ballast is to a ship and preserved the whole in a just equilibrium. ~ Ron Chernow,
636:William H. Herndon
There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
And I saw the figures of the past,
As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
Move through the incredible sphere of time.
And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
And throw himself over a deathless destiny,
Master of great armies, head of the republic,
Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song
The epic hopes of a people;
At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,
Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out
From spirits tempered in heaven.
Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on
To the place where his path comes up to the path
Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.
O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part,
And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,
Often and often I saw you,
As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood
Over my house-top at solemn sunsets,
There by my window,
Alone.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
637:Finnik?” I say. “Maybe some pants?”He looks down at his legs as if noticing them for the first time. Then he whips of his hospital gown, leaving him in just is underwear. “Why? Do you find this”-he strikes a ridiculously proactive pose-“distracting?”I can’t help laughing because it’s funny, and it’s extra funny because Boggs looks so uncomfortable, and I’m happy because Finnik actually sounds like the guy I met at the Quarter Quell.“I’m only human, Odair.” I get in before the elevator doors close. “Sorry,” I say to Boggs.“Don’t be. I thought you… handled that well,” He says. “Better than my having to arrest him, anyway.”

Fulvia Cardew hustles over an makes a sound of frustration when she sees my clean face. “All that hard work, down the drain. I’m not blaming you, Katniss. It’s just that very few people are born with camera-ready faces. Like him.” She snags Gale, who’s in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him towards us. “Isn’t he handsome?”Gale does look stricking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both Given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback when Boggs says brusquely, “Well don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear. ~ Suzanne Collins,
638:Finnik?” I say. “Maybe some pants?”
He looks down at his legs as if noticing them for the first time. Then he whips of his hospital gown, leaving him in just is underwear. “Why? Do you find this”-he strikes a ridiculously proactive pose-“distracting?”
I can’t help laughing because it’s funny, and it’s extra funny because Boggs looks so uncomfortable, and I’m happy because Finnik actually sounds like the guy I met at the Quarter Quell.
“I’m only human, Odair.” I get in before the elevator doors close. “Sorry,” I say to Boggs.
“Don’t be. I thought you… handled that well,” He says. “Better than my having to arrest him, anyway.”



Fulvia Cardew hustles over an makes a sound of frustration when she sees my clean face. “All that hard work, down the drain. I’m not blaming you, Katniss. It’s just that very few people are born with camera-ready faces. Like him.” She snags Gale, who’s in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him towards us. “Isn’t he handsome?”
Gale does look stricking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both Given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback when Boggs says brusquely, “Well don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear. ~ Suzanne Collins,
639: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? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. ~ Plutarch,
640:In the court of Nero, a person of learning, of unquestioned merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason, than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor. This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to be a person of virtue. Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind. When Alexander had in his fury inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of such a murder. In this juncture his council came to his assistance. But what did his council? They found him out a philosopher who gave him comfort. And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of such a crime? You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told him, "that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and lawful, because they are his. ~ Edmund Burke,
641:In the midst of this display of statesmanship, eloquence, cleverness, and exalted ambition, Alcibiades live d a life full of prodigious luxury, drunkenness, debauchery, and insolence. He was effeminate in his dress and would walk through the market-place trailing his long purple robes, and he spent extravagantly. He had the decks of his trireme scut away to allow him to sleep more comfortably, and his bedding was slung on cords, rather than spread on the hard planks. He had a golden shield made for him, which was emblazoned not with any ancestral device, but with the figure of Eros armed with a thunderbolt. The leading men of Athens watched all this with disgust and indignation and they were deeply disturbed by his contemptuous and lawless behavior, which seemed to them monstrous and suggested the habits of the tyrant. The people's feelings towards him have been very aptly expressed by Aristophanes in the line: "They long for him, they hate him, they cannot do without him..." The fact was that his voluntary donations, the public shows he supported, his unrivaled munificence to the state, the fame of his ancestry, the power of his oratory and his physical strength and beauty... all combined to make the Athenians forgive him everything else, and they were constantly finding euphemisms for his lapses and putting them down to youthful high spirits and honorable ambition. ~ Plutarch,
642:At last, he began to discourse of fortune and human affairs. "Is it meet," said he, "for him that knows he is but man, in his greatest prosperity to pride himself, and be exalted at the conquest of a city, nation, or kingdom, and not rather well to weigh this change of fortune, in which all warriors may see an example of their common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing durable or constant? For what time can men select to think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces us more than any to dread our own fortune? and a very little consideration on the law of things, and how all are hurried round, and each man's station changed, will introduce sadness in the midst of the greatest joy. Or can you, when you see before your eyes the succession of Alexander himself, who arrived at the height of power and ruled the greatest empire, in the short space of an hour trodden underfoot- when you behold a king, that was but even now surrounded with so numerous an army, receiving nourishment to support his life from the hands of his conquerors- can you, I say, believe there is any certainty in what we now possess whilst there is such a thing as chance? No, young men, cast off that vain pride and empty boast of victory; sit down with humility, looking always for what is yet to come, and the possible future reverses which the divine displeasure may eventually make the end of our present happiness. ~ Plutarch,
643:Just as the drivers in Gatsby and Bonfire responsible for crashes left others to bear the blame, so the One Percent seeks to shift responsibility onto the financial victims (“the madness of crowds”). Governments are blamed for running deficits, despite the fact that they result mainly from tax favoritism to the rentiers. Having used FICA paycheck withholding as a ploy to cut progressive tax rates on themselves since the 1980s, the One Percent blame the indebted population for living longer and creating a “retirement problem” by collecting the Social Security and pensions. This is financial warfare – and not all wars end with the victory of the most progressive parties. The end of history is not necessarily utopia. The financial mode of conquest against labor and industry is as devastating today as in the Roman Republic’s Social War that marked its transition to Empire in the 1st century BC. It was the dynamics of debt above all that turned the empire into a wasteland, reducing the population to debt bondage and outright slavery. Livy, Plutarch and other Roman historians placed the blame for their epoch’s collapse on creditors. Tacitus reports the words of the Celtic chieftain Calgacus, c. 83 AD, rousing his troops by describing the empire they were to fight against: Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land … If the enemy is rich, they are rapacious; if he is poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. … To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire. They make a wasteland and call it peace. The ~ Michael Hudson,
644:People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy—I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as “realists of a larger reality” because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

....

Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people have been using for this conversation since antiquity: speculation. It’s the genre of many worlds, the many worlds that Earth has been, and will be. ~ Ada Palmer,
645:...it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence. Thus, to say that action has to be lived in its truth, that is, in the consciousness of the antinomies which it involves, does not mean that one has to renounce it. In Plutarch Lied Pierrefeu rightly says that in war there is no victory which can not be regarded as unsuccessful, for the objective which one aims at is the total annihilation of the enemy and this result is never attained; yet there are wars which are won and wars which are lost. So is it with any activity; failure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself; painting is not given completely either in Giotto or Titian or Cezanne; it is sought through the centuries and is never finished; a painting in which all pictorial problems are resolved is really inconceivable; painting itself is this movement toward its own reality; it is not the vain displacement of a millstone turning in the void; it concretizes itself on each canvas as an absolute existence. Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it; which does not prevent there being truths and errors, masterpieces and lemons, depending upon whether the discovery or the painting has or has not known how to win the adherence of human consciousnesses; this amounts to saying that failure, always ineluctable, is in certain cases spared and in others not. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
646:In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith recalls a story from Plutarch’s Lives that may shed light on my friend’s inability to quit his job. It’s the story of Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, a region of Greece. Pyrrhus is planning an attack on Rome. His trusted adviser, Cineas—Smith him calls the king’s “favorite”—thinks it’s a bad idea. Cineas is an impressive guy, a brilliant wordsmith and negotiator whom the king often uses to represent himself. But even though he has the trust and ear of the king, it’s usually not a great idea to tell the king he’s making a mistake, even when you’re a favorite of his, so Cineas takes a roundabout approach. Here’s how Cineas begins in Plutarch’s version: “The Romans, sir, are reported to be great warriors and conquerors of many warlike nations; if God permits us to overcome them, how should we use our victory?” Well, says Pyrrhus, once we conquer Rome, we’ll be able to subdue all of Italy. And then what? asks Cineas. Sicily would be conquered next. And then what? asks Cineas. Libya and Carthage would be next to fall. And then what? asks Cineas. Then all of Greece, says the king. And what shall we do then? asks Cineas. Pyrrhus answers, smiling: “We will live at our ease, my dear friend, and drink all day, and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation.”   Then Cineas brings down the hammer on the king: “And what hinders Your Majesty from doing so now?” We have all the tools of contentment at hand already. You don’t have to conquer Italy to enjoy the fundamental pleasures of life. Stay human and subdue the rat within. Life’s not a race. It’s a journey to savor and enjoy. Ambition—the relentless desire for more—can eat you up. ~ Russ Roberts,
647:early years at Time, I was assigned to work under the national affairs editor, Otto Friedrich, a wry man with a bushy red mustache who seemed perpetually amused by himself. He taught me a wonderful insight about journalism and later biography: Obscure facts and pieces of colorful detail, even though they may seem trivial, provide the texture and verisimilitude that make for a great narrative. It was something that Plutarch noted at the beginning of his Lives: “Sometimes a matter of lesser moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their character and inclinations, than the most famous sieges.” Friedrich had expanded on the notion in a piece he titled “There Are 00 Trees in Russia.” The “00” referred to the way a newsmagazine writer sticks in “00” or “TK” as a placeholder for a fact and then lets a researcher fill it in. From Friedrich, who wrote books on the side, I learned that writing biographies and histories could be a satisfying accompaniment to a day job in journalism. When covering the 1980 Reagan campaign, I was struck by the bug-eyed bevy of people who showed up on the fringes of rallies and handed out leaflets purporting to expose the insidious nature of the East Coast foreign policy establishment. The leaflets were filled with charts and arrows about the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefellers, the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, and various banking cabals. I asked my Time colleague Evan Thomas about it, under the theory that as an East Coast preppy he could decode it. Eventually we began to talk about writing a book that would explore the reality and myths about “the establishment.” We sketched it out in a summer cottage in Sag Harbor on Long Island. I’m a night person, and would try to stay up until 5 a.m., at which point I would hand over my notes to Evan, who got up around then. We’d go to the beach in the afternoon. We came around to the dual approaches that were at the core of our work at Time: Tell the tale through people, and make it a chronological narrative. ~ Walter Isaacson,
648:Thus, the person of experience and reflection writes history. Anyone who has not experienced life on a greater and higher level than everyone else will not know how to interpret the greatness and loftiness of the past. The utterance of the past is always an oracular pronouncement. You will understand it only as builders of the future and as people who know about the present. People now explain the extraordinarily deep and far-reaching effect of Delphi by the particular fact that the Delphic priests had precise knowledge about the past. It is appropriate now to understand that only the man who builds the future has a right to judge the past. In order to look ahead, set yourselves an important goal, and at the same time control that voluptuous analytical drive with which you now lay waste the present and render almost impossible all tranquility, all peaceful growth and maturing. Draw around yourself the fence of a large and extensive hope, an optimistic striving. Create in yourselves a picture to which the future is to correspond, and forget the myth that you are epigones. You have enough to plan and to invent when you imagine that future life for yourselves. But in considering history do not ask that she show you the 'How?' and the 'With what?' If, however, you live your life in the history of great men, then you will learn from history the highest command: to become mature and to flee away from that paralyzing and prohibiting upbringing of the age, which sees advantages for itself in not allowing you to become mature, in order to rule and exploit you, the immature. And when you ask after biographies, then do not ask for those with the refrain 'Mr. Soandso and His Age' but for those whose title page must read 'A Fighter Against His Age.' Fill your souls with Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you have faith in his heroes. With a hundred people raised in such an unmodern way, that is, people who have become mature and familiar with the heroic, one could permanently silence the entire noisy pseudo-education of this age. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
649:A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think about the heavens, but not to waste their time observing them. Aristotle believed that: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.… The slave shares in his master’s life; the artisan is less closely connected with him, and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.” Plutarch wrote: “It does not of necessity follow that, if the work delight you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of esteem.” Xenophon’s opinion was: “What are called the mechanical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.” As a result of such attitudes, the brilliant and promising Ionian experimental method was largely abandoned for two thousand years. Without experiment, there is no way to choose among contending hypotheses, no way for science to advance. The anti-empirical taint of the Pythagoreans survives to this day. But why? Where did this distaste for experiment come from? An explanation for the decline of ancient science has been put forward by the historian of science, Benjamin Farrington: The mercantile tradition, which led to Ionian science, also led to a slave economy. The owning of slaves was the road to wealth and power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All the brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few. What slaves characteristically perform is manual labor. But scientific experimentation is manual labor, from which the slaveholders are preferentially distanced; while it is only the slaveholders—politely called “gentle-men” in some societies—who have the leisure to do science. Accordingly, almost no one did science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the availability of slaves undermined the economic motive for the development of technology. Thus the mercantile tradition contributed to the great Ionian awakening around 600 B.C., and, through slavery, may have been the cause of its decline some two centuries later. There are great ironies here. ~ Carl Sagan,
650:In the first case it emerges that the evidence that might refute a theory can often be unearthed only with the help of an incompatible alternative: the advice (which goes back to Newton and which is still popular today) to use alternatives only when refutations have already discredited the orthodox theory puts the cart before the horse. Also, some of the most important formal properties of a theory are found by contrast, and not by analysis. A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with 'experience' and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition. Proceeding in this way he will retain the theories of man and cosmos that are found in Genesis, or in the Pimander, he will elaborate them and use them to measure the success of evolution and other 'modern' views. He may then discover that the theory of evolution is not as good as is generally assumed and that it must be supplemented, or entirely replaced, by an improved version of Genesis. Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others in greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness. Nothing is ever settled, no view can ever be omitted from a comprehensive account. Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius, and not Dirac or von Neumann, are the models for presenting a knowledge of this kind in which the history of a science becomes an inseparable part of the science itself - it is essential for its further development as well as for giving content to the theories it contains at any particular moment. Experts and laymen, professionals and dilettani, truth-freaks and liars - they all are invited to participate in the contest and to make their contribution to the enrichment of our culture. The task of the scientist, however, is no longer 'to search for the truth', or 'to praise god', or 'to synthesize observations', or 'to improve predictions'. These are but side effects of an activity to which his attention is now mainly directed and which is 'to make the weaker case the stronger' as the sophists said, and thereby to sustain the motion of the whole. ~ Paul Karl Feyerabend,
651:Section 3. Confirmed also by the vain endeavours of the wicked to banish all fear of God from their minds. Conclusion, that the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in the human mind. All men of sound judgement will therefore hold, that a sense of Deity is indelibly engraven on the human heart. And that this belief is naturally engendered in all, and thoroughly fixed as it were in our very bones, is strikingly attested by the contumacy of the wicked, who, though they struggle furiously, are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God. Though Diagoras[4], and others of like stamps make themselves merry with whatever has been believed in all ages concerning religion, and Dionysus scoffs at the judgement of heaven, it is but a Sardonian grin; for the worm of conscience, keener than burning steel, is gnawing them within. I do not say with Cicero, that errors wear out by age, and that religion increases and grows better day by day. For the world (as will be shortly seen) labours as much as it can to shake off all knowledge of God, and corrupts his worship in innumerable ways. I only say, that, when the stupid hardness of heart, which the wicked eagerly court as a means of despising God, becomes enfeebled, the sense of Deity, which of all things they wished most to be extinguished, is still in vigour, and now and then breaks forth. Whence we infer, that this is not a doctrine which is first learned at school, but one as to which every man is, from the womb, his own master; one which nature herself allows no individual to forget, though many, with all their might, strive to do so. Moreover, if all are born and live for the express purpose of learning to know God, and if the knowledge of God, in so far as it fails to produce this effect, is fleeting and vain, it is clear that all those who do not direct the whole thoughts and actions of their lives to this end fail to fulfil the law of their being. This did not escape the observation even of philosophers. For it is the very thing which Plato meant (in Phoed. et Theact.) when he taught, as he often does, that the chief good of the soul consists in resemblance to God; i.e., when, by means of knowing him, she is wholly transformed into him. Thus Gryllus, also, in Plutarch, (lib. guod bruta anim. ratione utantur,) reasons most skilfully, when he affirms that, if once religion is banished from the lives of men, they not only in no respect excel, but are, in many respects, much more wretched than the brutes, since, being exposed to so many forms of evil, they continually drag on a troubled and restless existence: that the only thing, therefore, which makes them superior is the worship of God, through which alone they aspire to immortality. ~ John Calvin,
652:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
4. Sophocles – Tragedies
5. Herodotus – Histories
6. Euripides – Tragedies
7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes – Comedies
10. Plato – Dialogues
11. Aristotle – Works
12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid – Elements
14. Archimedes – Works
15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections
16. Cicero – Works
17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil – Works
19. Horace – Works
20. Livy – History of Rome
21. Ovid – Works
22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy – Almagest
27. Lucian – Works
28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus – The Enneads
32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njál
36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More – Utopia
44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton – Works
59. Molière – Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve – The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,
653:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
   ~ Mortimer J Adler,
654:or Callistratus. Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon
"dragging me into court" over "last year's play" but here again it is not clear if
this was said on behalf of ~ Aristophanes



or Callistratus, either of whom might
have been prosecuted by Cleon.
Comments made by the Chorus on behalf of ~ Aristophanes



in The Clouds have
been interpreted as evidence that he can have been hardly more than 18 years
old when his first play The Banqueters was produced. The second parabasis in
Wasps appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary
accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over The Babylonians
or a subsequent controversy over The Knights.[ It has been inferred from
statements in The Clouds and Peace that ~ Aristophanes



was prematurely bald.
We know that ~ Aristophanes



was probably victorious at least once at the City
Dionysia (with Babylonians in 427)and at least three times at the Lenaia, with
Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs in fact won the
unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. We know
that a son of ~ Aristophanes



, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have
been heavily involved in the production of his father's play Wealth II in s is also
thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now
lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus, and it is possible that the last of these won
the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was
twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus’
comedies.A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by
the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the
first probably in the late 370s.
Plato's The Symposium appears to be a useful source of biographical information
about ~ Aristophanes



, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record
of conversations at a dinner party at which both ~ Aristophanes



and Socrates are
guests, held some seven years after the performance of The Clouds, the play in
which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades, even
quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there is
no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and ~ Aristophanes



. Plato's
~ Aristophanes



is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as
evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be
corroborated by an epitaph for ~ Aristophanes



, reputedly written by Plato, in which
the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces). Plato was
only a boy when the events in The Symposium are supposed to have occurred
and it is possible that his ~ Aristophanes



is in fact based on a reading of the plays.
For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and
~ Aristophanes



explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device
he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccoughs
and this might be a humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays.
He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is
wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his
declaration in The Knights that he embarked on a career of comic playwright
warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had
incurred.
~ Aristophanes



survived The Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two
democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he was not
actively involved in politics despite his highly political plays. He was probably
appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth
century but such appointments were very common in democratic tes, in the trial
leading up to his own death, put the issue of a personal conscience in those
troubled times quite succinctly:
"...he who will really fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while,
must have a private station and not a public one.
~ Aristophanes



the Poet
The language in ~ Aristophanes



' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued
by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian
believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an
example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these
respects only to the works of
A full appreciation of ~ Aristophanes



' plays requires an understanding of the poetic
forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and
associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter
verses and lyrics:
Iambic dialogue: ~ Aristophanes



achieves an effect resembling natural speech
through the use of the iambic hexameter (corresponding to the effects achieved
by English poets such as

based on words that are similar rather than identical, and it has been observed
that there could be more of them than scholars have yet been able to identify.
Others are based on double meanings. Sometimes entire scenes are constructed
on puns, as in The Acharnians with the Megarian farmer and his pigs: the
Megarian farmer defies the Athenian embargo against Megarian trade, and tries
to trade his daughters disguised as pigs, except "pig" was ancient slang for
"vagina". Since the embargo against Megara was the pretext for the
Peloponnesian War, ~ Aristophanes



naturally concludes that this whole mess
happened because of "three cunts".
It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is
imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In
'The Knights', for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are
represented as parasols that open and close.In The Frogs, Aeschylus is said to
compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature
revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in
character, such as the marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus's paramour in
The Birds and the 'recreation' of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of
The Knights.
~ Aristophanes



and Old Comedy
The Greek word for 'comedy' (komoidía) derives from the words for 'revel' and
'song' (komos and ode) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually
developed from song. The first, official comedy at the City Dionysia was not
staged until 487/6 BC, by which time tragedy had already been long established
there. The first comedy at the Lenaia was staged later still, only about 20 years
before the performance there of The Acharnians, the first of ~ Aristophanes



'
surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official
acceptance because nobody took it seriously yet, only sixty years after comedy
first appeared at 'The City Dionysia', ~ Aristophanes



observed that producing
comedies was the most difficult work of tition at the Dionysian festivals needed
dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations.
Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle was able to distinguish between
'old' and 'new' comedy by 330 BC. The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy
saw a move away from highly topical concerns with real individuals and local
issues towards generalized situations and stock characters. This was partly due
to the internationalization of cultural perspectives during and after the
Peloponnesian War. For ancient commentators such as Plutarch, New Comedy
was a more sophisticated form of drama than Old Comedy. However Old Comedy
was in fact a complex and sophisticated dramatic form incorporating many
approaches to humour and entertainment. In ~ Aristophanes



' early plays, the
genre appears to have developed around a complex set of dramatic conventions
and these were only gradually simplified and abandoned.
The City Dionysia and the Lenaia were celebrated in honour of Dionysus, a god
who represented Man's darker nature (Euripides' play The Bacchae offers the
best insight into 5th Century ideas about this god). Old Comedy can be
understood as a celebration of the exuberant sense of release inherent in his
worship It was more interested in finding targets for satire than in any kind of
advocacy. During the City Dionysia, a statue of the god was brought to the
theatre from a temple outside the city and it remained in the theatre throughout
the festival, overseeing the plays like a privileged member of the audience.[102]
In The Frogs, the god appears also as a dramatic character and he enters the
theatre ludicrously disguised as Hercules. He observes to the audience that every
time he is on hand to hear a joke from a comic dramatist like Phrynichus (one of
~ Aristophanes



' rivals) he ages by more than a year. The scene opens the play and
it is a reminder to the audience that nobody is above mockery in Old Comedy —
not even its patron god and its practitioners! Gods, artists, politicians and
ordinary citizens were legitimate targets, comedy was a kind of licensed
buffoonery and there was no legal redress for anyone who was slandered in a
play. There were some limits to the scope of the satire, but they are not easily
defined. Impiety could be punished in 5th century Athens but absurdities implicit
in traditional religion were open to ridicule. The polis was not allowed to be
slandered but, as stated in the biography section of this article, that could
depend on who was in the audience and which festival was involved.
For convenience, Old Comedy, as represented by ~ Aristophanes



' early plays, is
analysed below in terms of three broad characteristics — topicality, festivity and
complexity. Dramatic structure contributes to the complexity of ~ Aristophanes



'
plays. However it is associated with poetic rhythms and meters that have little
relevance to English translations and it is therefore treated in a separate section.
Influence and legacy
The tragic dramatists, Sophocles and Euripides, died near the end of the
Peloponnesian War and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet
comedy did continue to develop after the defeat of Athens and it is possible that
it did so because, in ~ Aristophanes



, it had a master craftsman who lived long
enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source
(Platonius, c.9th Century AD), one of ~ Aristophanes



's last plays, Aioliskon, had
neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy),
while Kolakos anticipated all the elements of New Comedy, including a rape and
a recognition scene. ~ Aristophanes



seems to have had some appreciation of his
formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in
Clouds that his audience would be judged by other times according to its
reception of his plays. Clouds was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original
performance and the text that has come down to the modern age was a
subsequent draft that ~ Aristophanes



intended to be read rather than circulation of
his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience,
over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did
not affect the career of Cleon, they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an
honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in
the trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public
animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades),
exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the plays, in manuscript
form, have been put to some surprising uses — as indicated earlier, they were
used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by
students of the Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible
that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might
learn about Athenian life and government.
Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated
widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by
translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine, for example, drew Les
Plaideurs (1668) from The Wasps.

winged."
Drama
1909: Wasps, original Greek, Cambridge University undergraduate production,
music by Vaughan Williams;
2004, July–October: The Frogs (musical), adapted by Nathan Lane, music and
lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed at The Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Broadway;
1962-2006: various plays by students and staff, Kings College London, in the
original Greek:Frogs 1962,1971,1988; Thesmophoriazusae 1965, 1974, 1985;
Acharnians 1968, 1992, 2004; Clouds 1977, 1990; Birds 1982, 2000;
Ecclesiazusae 2006; Peace 1970; Wasps 1981
2002: Lysistrata, adapted by Robert Brustein, music by Galt McDermot,
performed by American Repertory Theatre, Boston U.S.A.;
10
2008, May–June: Frogs, adapted by David Greenspan, music by Thomas
Cabaniss, performed by Classic Stage Company, New York, U.S.A.
Literature
The romantic poet, Percy Shelley, wrote a comic, lyrical drama (Swellfoot the
Tyrrant) in imitation of ~ Aristophanes



' play The Frogs after he was reminded of
the Chorus in that play by a herd of pigs passing to market under the window of
his lodgings in San Giuliano, Italy.
~ Aristophanes



(particularly in reference to The Clouds) is mentioned frequently by
the character Menedemos in the Hellenic Traders series of novels by H N
Turteltaub.
A liberal version of the comedies have been published in comic book format,
initially by "Agrotikes Ekdoseis" during the 1990s and republished over the years
by other companies. The plot was written by Tasos Apostolidis and the sketches
were of George Akokalidis. The stories feature either ~ Aristophanes



narrating
them, directing the play, or even as a character inside one of his stories.
Electronic Media
The Wasps, radio play adapted by David Pountney, music by Vaughan Williams,
recorded 26–28 July 2005, Albert Halls, Bolten, in association with BBC, under
Halle label;
Acropolis Now is a comedy radio show for the BBC set in Ancient Greece. It
features ~ Aristophanes



, Socrates and many other famous Greeks. (Not to be
confused with the Australian sitcom of the same name.) ~ Aristophanes



is
characterised as a celebrity playwright, and most of his plays have the title
formula: One of Our [e.g] Slaves has an Enormous Knob (a reference to the
exaggerated appendages worn by Greek comic actors)
~ Aristophanes



Against the World was a radio play by Martyn Wade and broadcast
on BBC Radio 4. Loosely based on several of his plays, it featured Clive Merrison
as ~ Aristophanes



.
In The Odd Couple, Oscar and Felix are on Password, and when the password is
bird, Felix’s esoteric clue is "~ Aristophanes



" because of his play The Birds. During
the commercial break (having failed to guess the password and lost the round),
Oscar orders Felix not to give any more Greek clues and angrily growls,
"~ Aristophanes



is ridiculous"! Then when it's Oscar’s turn to give the clue on the
11
team’s next shot, the password is ridiculous and Oscar angrily growls
"~ Aristophanes



", to which Felix gleefully responds, "Ridiculous!"
Music
Satiric Dances for a Comedy by ~ Aristophanes



is a three-movement piece for
concert band composed by Norman Dello Joio. It was commissioned in
commemoration of the Bicentennial of April 19, 1775 (the start of the American
Revolutionary War) by the Concord (Massachusetts) Band. The commission was
funded by the Town of Concord and assistance was given by the Eastern National
Park and Monument Association in cooperation with the National Park Service.
12
A Parody On Euripides's Lyric Verse
Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim
Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room
Silver notes of the whistling loom,
Where the light-footed dolphin skips
Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,
Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,
Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!
I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,
But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man.
~ Aristophanes,
655:The Bush
I wonder if the spell, the mystery,
That like a haze about your silence clings,
Moulding your void until we seem to see
Tangible Presences of Deathless Things,
Patterned but little to our spirits' woof,
Yet from our love or hate not all aloof,
Can. be the matrix where are forming slowly
Troy tales of Old Australia, to refine
Eras to come of ordered melancholy
'Neath lily-pale Perfection's anodyne.
For Troy hath ever been, and Homer sang
Its younger story for a lodging's fee,
While o'er Scamander settlers' axes rang
Amid the Bush where Ilium was to be.
For Cretan Art, dim centuries before,
Minoan Dream-times some Briseis bore.
Sumerian Phoebus by a willowed water
Song-built a Troy for far Chaldea, where
The sons of God, beholding Leda's daughter,
Bartered eternal thrones for love of her.
Across each terraced aeon Time hath sowed
With green tautology of vanished years,
Gaping aghast or webbed with shining lode,
Achilles' anger's earthquake-rift appears.
The towers that Phoebus builds can never fall:
Desire that Helen lights can never pall:
Yea, wounded Love hath still but gods to fly to,
When lust of war inflames Diomedes:
Must some Australian Hector vainly die, too?
Captives in ships? (0 change that omen, Trees!)
Yea, Mother Bush, in your deep dreams abide
Cupids alert for man and maid unborn,
Apprentice Pucks amid your saplings hide,
And wistful gorges wait a Roland horn:
Wallet of Sigurd shall this swag replace,
And centaurs curvet where those brumbies race.
39
That drover's tale of love shall greaten duly
Through magic prisms of a myriad years,
Till bums Isolde to Tristram's fervour newly,
Or Launcelot to golden Guinevere's.
The miner cradling washdirt by the creek,
Or pulled through darkness dripping to the plat:
The navvy boring tunnels through the peak:
The farmer grubbing box-trees on the flat:
The hawker camping by the roadside spring:
The hodman on the giddy scaffolding:
Moths that around the fashion windows flutter:
The racecourse spider and the betting fly:
The children romping by the city gutter,
While baby crows to every passer-byFrom these rough blocks strewn o'er our ancient stream
Sculptors shall chisel brownie, fairy, faun,
Any myrmidons of some Homeric dream
From Melbourne mob and Sydney push be drawn.
The humdrum lives that now we tire of, then
Romance shall be, and 'we heroic men
Treading the vestibule of Golden Ages,
The Isthmus of the Land of Heart's Desire:
For lo! the Sybil's final volume's pages
Ope with our Advent, close when we expire.
Forgetful Change in one 'antiquity'
Boreal gleams shall drown, and southern glows;
Out of some singing woman's heart-break plea
Australia's dawn shall flush with Sappho's rose:
Strong Shirlow's hand shall trace Mantegna's line,
And Soma foam from Victor Daley's wine:
Scholars to be our prehistoric drama
From Esson's 'Woman Tamer' shall restore,
Or find in Gilbert's 'Lotus Stream and Lama'
An Austral Nile and Buddhas we adore.
The sunlit Satyrs follow Hugh McCrae,
Quinn spans the ocean with a Celtic ford,
And Williamson the Pan-pipe learns to play
From magpie-songs our schoolboy ears ignored:
40
A sweeter woe no keen of Erin gave
Than Kendall sings o'er Araluen's grave:
Tasmanian Wordsworth to his chapel riding
The Burning Bush and Ardath mead shall pass,
Or, from the sea-coast of Bohemia gliding
On craft of dream, behold a shepherd lass.
Jessie Mackay on Southern Highlands sees
The elves deploy in kem and gallowglass:
Our Gilbert Murray writes 'Euripides':
Pirani merges in Pythagoras:
Marsyas plunges into Lethe, flayed,
From Rhadamanthine Stephens' steady blade:
While Benvenuto Morton, drunk with singing,
Sees salamanders in a bush-fire's bed,
And Spencer sails from Alcheringa bringing
Intaglios, totems and Books of the Dead.
On Southern fiords shall Brady's Long Snakes hiss,
Heavy with brides he wins to Viking troth:
O'Reilly's Sydney shall be Sybaris,
While Melbourne's Muses sup their Spartan broth:
Murdoch, Zenobia's counsellor, in time,
Redacts from Burke his book on The Sublime:
By Way was Homer into Greek translated:
And Shakespeare's self is Sophocles so plain
They know the kerb whereon the Furies waited
Outside the Mermaid Inn in Brogan's Lane.
Vane shall divide with Vern Eureka's fame;
Tillett and Mann are Tyler then and Cade:
Dowie's entwines with Cagliostro's name,
And in Tarpeia's, lo, those fair forms fade
Who drug the poor, for social bread and wine,
And lift the furtive latch to Catiline:
There, where the Longmore-featured Gracchi hurry,
And Greek-browed Higinbotham walks, anon,
The 'wealthy lower orders' leap the Murray
Before the stockwhip cracks of Jardine Don.
Cleons in 'Windsor dress at Syracuse
Their thin plebeians' promised meal delay;
41
And Archibald begets Australia's Muse
Upon an undine red of Chowder Bay:
Paterson's swan draws Amphitrite's car,
And Sidon learns from Young what purples are:
Rose Scott refutes dogmatic Cyril gaily,
Hypatia turns the anti-suffrage flank,
And Herod's daughter sools her 'morning daily'
On John the Baptist by the Yarra Bank.
Yon regal bustard, fading hence ere long,
Shall seem the guide we followed to the Grail;
This lyre-bird on his dancing-mound of song
Our mystagogue of some Bacchantic vale,
Where feathered Pan guffaws 'Evoe!' above,
And Maenad curlews shriek their midnight love:
That trailing flight of distant swans is bearing
Sarpedon's soul to its eternal joy:
This ibis, from the very Nile, despairing,
Memnon our own would warn from fatal Troy.
Primeval gnomes distilled the golden bribes
That have impregnated your musing waste with men;
But shall the spell of your pathetic tribes
Curl round, in time, our fairer limbs again?
Through that long tunnel of your gloom, I see
Gardens of a metropolis to be!
Out of the depths the mountain ash is soaring
To embryon gods of what unsounded space?
Out of the heights what influence is pouring
Thin desolation on your haunted face?
Many there are who see no higher lot
For all your writhing centuries of toil
Than that the avaricious plough should blot
Their wilding burgeon, and the red brand spoil
Your cyclopean garniture, to sow
The cheap parterres of Europe on your woe.
They weave all sorceries but yours, and borrow
The tinkling spells of alien winds and seas
To drown the chord of purifying sorrow,
Bom ere the world, that pulses through your trees.
42
For, save when we, in not o'er-subtle mood,
Hear magpies warbling soft November in,
Or, hand in hand with Love, a dreaming wood
Or bouldered crest of crisper April win,
Your harps, unblurred by glozing strings, intone
The dirges that behind Creation moan'Where, riding reinless billows, new lives dash on
The souring beach of yesterday's decay,
Where Love's chord leaps from mandrake shrieks of passion,
And groping gods mould man from quivering clay.
(Is Nature deaf and blind and dumb? A cruse
Unfilled of wine? Clay for an unbreathed soul?
Alien to man, till his desires transfuse
Their flames through wind and water, leaf and bole,
And each crude fane elaborately fit
With oracles that echo all his wit?
The living wilds of Greece saw death returning
When Pan that men had made fell from his throne:
Till through her sap our very blood is churning
The Bush her lonely alien woe shall moan!
Or is she reticent but to be kind?
Whispers she not beneath her mask of clods'Who asks he shall receive, who seeks shall find,
Who knocks shall open every door of God's?'
Dumb Faith's, blind Hope's eternal consort she,
Gravid with all that is on earth to be;
Corn, wine and oil in hungry granite hiding,
All Beauty under sober wings of clay,
All life beneath her dead heart long abiding,
Yea, all the gods her sons and she obey!)
What sin's wan expiation strewed your Vast
With mounded pillage of what conquering fire?
Slumbering throes of what prodigious Past
Exhale these lingering ghosts of its desire?
Sunshine that bleached corruption out, that glare?
Desolate blue of Purgatory, there?
Flagellant winds through guilty Eden scouring?
Sahara drowning Prester John's domain?
Satumian dam her progeny devouring?
Hath dawn-time Hun these footprints left? Hath Cain?
43
Even the human wave, that shall at length
To man's endurance key your strident surge,
Sings in your poignant tones and sombre strength,
And makes, as yet, its own your primal dirge:
A gun-shot startles dawn back from the sky,
And mourning tea-trees echo Gordon's sigh:
Nardoo with Burke's faint sweat is dank for ever:
Spectral a tribe round poisoned rations shrieks:
Till doomday Leichhardt walks die Never Never:
Pensive, of Boake, the circling stock-whip speaks.
The wraiths unseen of roadside crimes unnamed
About that old-time shanty's ruins roam:
This squatter's fenceless acres hide ashamed
The hearth and battered zinc of Naboth's home:
Deserted 'yam-holes' pit your harmonies
With sloughing pock-marks of the gold-disease:
The sludgy creek 'mid hungry rushes rambles,
Where teal once dived and lowan raised her mound:
That tree, with crows, o'erlooks the township shambles:
These paddocks, ordure-smeared, the city bound.
0 yield not all to factory and farm!
For we, who drew a milk no stranger knows
From her scant paps, yearn for the acrid charm
That gossamers the Bush Where No Tree Grows.
And we have ritual moments when we crave
For worship in some messmate-pillared nave,
Where contrite 'bears' for woodland sins are kneeling,
And, 'mid the censers of the mountain musk,
Acolyte bell-birds the Angelus are pealing,
And boobooks moan lone vespers in the dusk,
And you have Children of the Dreaming Star,
Who care but little for the crowded ways
Where meagre spirits' vapid prizes are,
Or for the paddocked ease of dreamless days
And hedges clipped of every sunny growth
That plights the soul to God in daily troth:
Their wayward love prefers your desolation,
Or (where the human trail hath seared its charm)
44
The briar-rose on some abandoned 'station',
To all the tilled obedience of the farm.
Vineyards that purblind thrift shall never glean
The weedy waste and thistly gully hold:
No mint shall melt to currency unclean
Yon river-rounded hillock's Cape-broom gold:
The onion-grass upon that dark green slope
Returns our gaze from eyes of heliotrope:
But more we seek your underflowered expanses
Of scrub monotonous, or, where, O Bush,
The craters of your fiery noon's romances,
Like great firm bosoms, through the bare plains push.
As many. Mother, are your moods and forms
As all the sons who love you. Here, you mow
Careering grounds for every brood of storms
The wild sea-mares to desert stallions throw;
Anon, up through a sea of sand you glance
With green ephemeral exuberance,
And then quick seeds dive deep to years of slumber
From hot-hoofed drought's precipitate return:
There, league on league, the snow's cold fingers number
The shrinking nerves of supple-jack and fern.
To other eyes and ears you are a great
Pillared cathedral tremulously green,
An odorous and hospitable gate
To genial mystery, the happy screen
Of truants or of lovers rambling there
'Neath sun-shot boughs o'er miles of maidenhair.
Wee rubies dot the leaflets of the cherries,
The wooing wagtails hop from log to bough,
The bronzewing comes from Queensland for the berries,
The bell-bird by the creek is calling now.
And you can ride, an Eastern queen, they say,
By living creatures sumptuously borne,
With all barbaric equipages gay,
Beneath the torrid blue of Capricorn.
That native lotus is the very womb
That was the Hindoo goddess' earthly tomb.
45
The gang-gang screams o'er cactus wildernesses,
Palm trees are there, and swampy widths of rice,
Unguents and odours ooze from green recesses,
The jungles blaze with birds of Paradise.
But I, in city exile, hear you sing
Of saplinged hill and box-tree dotted plain,
Or silver-grass that prays the North Wind's wing
Convey its sigh to the loitering rain:
And Spring is half distraught with wintry gusts,
Summer the daily spoil of tropic lusts
The sun and she too fiercely shared together
Lingering thro' voluptuous Hindoo woods,
But o'er my windless, soft autumnal weather
The peace that passes understanding broods.
When, now, they say 'The Bush!', I see the top
Delicate amber leanings of the gum
Flutter, or flocks of screaming green leeks drop
Silent, where in the shining morning hum
The gleaning bees for honey-scented hours
'Mid labyrinthine leaves and white gum flowers.
Cantering midnight hoofs are nearing, nearing,
The straining bullocks flick the harpy flies,
The 'hatter' weeds his melancholy clearing,
The distant cow-bell tinkles o'er the rise.
You are the brooding comrade of our way,
Whispering rumour of a new Unknown,
Moulding us white ideals to obey,
Steeping whate'er we learn in lore your own,
And freshening with unpolluted light
The squalid city's day and pallid night,
Till we become ourselves distinct, Australian,
(Your native lightning charging blood and nerve),
Stripped to the soul of borrowed garments, alien
To that approaching Shape of God you serve.
Brooding, brooding, your whispers murmur plain
That searching for the clue to mystery
In grottos of decrepitude is vain,
That never shall the eye of prophet see
46
In crooked Trade's tumultuous streets the plan
Of templed cities adequate to man.
Brooding, brooding, you make us Brahmins waiting
(While uninspired pass on the hurtling years),
Faithful to dreams your spirit is creating,
Till Great Australia, born of you, appears.
For Great Australia is not yet: She waits
(Where o'er the Bush prophetic auras play)
The passing of these temporary States,
Flaunting their tawdry flags of far decay.
Her aureole above the alien mists
Beacons our filial eyes to mountain trysts:
'Mid homely trees with all ideals fruited,
She shelters us till Trade's Simoom goes by,
And slakes our thirst from cisterns unpolluted .
For ages cold in brooding deeps of sky.
We love our brothers, and to heal their woe
Pluck simples from the known old gardens still:
We love our kindred over seas, and grow
Their symbols tenderly o'er plain and hill;
We feel their blood rebounding in our hearts,
And speak as they would speak our daily parts:
But under all we know, we know that only
A virgin womb unsoiled by ancient fear
Can Saviours bear. So, we, your Brahmins, lonely,
Deaf to the barren tumult, wait your Year.
The Great Year's quivering dawn pencils the Night
To be the morning of our children's prime,
And weave from rays of yet ungathered Light
A richer noon than e'er apparelled Time.
If it must be, as Tuscan wisdom knew,
Babylon's seer, and wistful Egypt too,
That mellow afternoon shall pensive guide us
Down somnolent Decay's ravine to rest,
Then you, reborn, 0 Mother Bush, shall hide us
All the long night at your dream-laden breast.
Australian eyes that heed your lessons know
Another world than older pilgrims may:
47
Prometheus chained in Kosciusko's snow
Sees later gods than Zeus in turn decay:
Boundless plateaux expand the spirit's sight,
Resilient gales uphold her steeper flight:
And your close beating heart, 0 savage Mother,
Throbs secret words of joy and starker pain
Than reach the ears all old deceptions smother
In Lebanon, or e'en in Westermain.
We marvel not, who hear your undersong,
And catch a glimpse in rare exalted hours
Of something like a Being gleam along
Festooned arcades of flossie creeper flowers,
Or, toward the mirk, seem privileged to share
The silent rapture of the trees at prayerWe marvel not that seers in other ages,
With eyes unstrained by peering logic, saw
The desolation glow with Koran pages,
Or Sinai stones with Tables of the Law.
Homers are waiting in the gum trees now,
Far driven from the tarnished Cyclades:
More Druids to your green enchantment bow
Than 'neath unfaithful Mona's vanished trees:
A wind hath spirited from ageing France
To our fresh hills the carpet of Romance:
Heroes and maids of old with young blood tingling
In ampler gardens grow their roses new:
And races long apart their manas mingling
Prepare the cradle of an Advent due.
And those who dig the mounded eld for runes
To read Religion's tangled cipher, here,
Where all Illusion haunts the fainting noons
Of days hysteric with the tireless leer
Of ravenous enamoured suns, shall find
How May a flings her mantle o'er the mind,
Till sober sand to shining water changes,
Dodona whispers from the she-oak groves,
Afreets upon the tempest cross the ranges,
And Fafnir through the bunyip marshes roves.
48
Once, when Uranian Love appeared to glow
Through that abysmal Night that bounds our reignLove that a man may scarcely feel and know i
Quite the same world as other men againWith earthward-streaming frontier wraiths distraught,
Your oracles, 0 Mother Bush, I sought:
But found, dismayed, that eerie light revealing
Those wraiths already in your depths on sleuth,
Termagant Scorns along your hillsides stealing,
Remorse unbaring slow her barbed tooth.
My own thoughts first from far dispersion flew
Back to their sad creator, with the crops
Of woes in flower and all the harvests due
Till tiring Time the fearful seeding stops:
In pigmy forms of friends and foes, anon
In my own image, they came, stung, were gone:
And then I heard the voice of Him Who Questions,
Knowing the faltered answer ere it came,
Chilling the soul by hovering suggestions
Of wan damnation at a wince of blame.
And all your leaves in symbols were arranged,
Despairs long dead would leap from bough to bough,
A gum-tree buttress to a goblin changed
Grinning the warmth of some old broken vow:
Furtive desires for scarce-remembered maids
Glanced in a fearful bo-peep from your shades:
Till you became a purgatory cleansing
With rosy flakes in form of manikins,
To fiercer shame within my soul condensing,
The dim pollution of forgotten sins.
And She, the human symbol of that Love,
Would, as my cleansed eyes forgot their fear,
Comrade beside me. Comforter above,
With sunny smile ubiquitous appear:
Run on before me to the nooks we knew,
Walk hand in hand as glad young lovers do,
Gravely reprove me toying with temptation,
Show me the eyes and ears in roots and clods,
Bend with me o'er some blossom's revelation,
49
Or read from clouds the judgments of the gods.
My old ideals She would tune until
The grating note of self no longer rang:
She drove the birds of gloom and evil will
Out of the cote wherein my poems sang.
Time at Her wand annulled his calendar,
And Space his fallacy of Near and Far,
For through my Bush along with me She glided,
And crowded days of Beauty made more fair,
Though lagging weeks and ocean widths divided
Her mortal casing from Her Presence there.
Her wetted finger oped my shuttered eyes
To boyhood's scership of the Real again:
Upon the Bush descended from the skies
The rapt-up Eden of primordial men:
August Dominions through the vistas strode:
On white-maned clouds the smiling cherubs rode:
Maltreated Faith restored my jangled hearing
Till little seraphs sang from chip and clod:
And prayers were radiant children that, unfearing,
Floated as kisses to the lips of God.
It matters not that for some purpose wise
Myopic Reason censored long ago
The revelations of that Paradise,
When, back of all I feel or will or know,
Its silent angels beacon through the Dark
And point to harbours new my drifted ark.
Nor need we dread the fogs that round us thicken
Questing the Bush for Grails decreed for man,
When Powers our fathers saw unseen still quicken
Eyes that were ours before the world began.
'Twas then I saw the Vision of the Ways,
And 'mid their gloom and glory seemed to live,
Threaded the coverts of the Dark Road's maze,
Toiled up, with tears, the Track Retributive,
And, on the Path of Grace, beheld aglow
The love-lit Nave of all that wheeled below.
And She who flowered, my Mystic Rose, in Heaven,
50
And lit the Purging Mount, my Guiding Star,
Trudged o'er the marl, my mate, through Hell's wan levin,
Nor shrank, like lonely Dante's love, afar.
High towered a cloud over one leafy wild,
And to a bridged volcano grew. Above,
A great Greek group of father, mother, child,
Illumed a narrow round with radiant love.
Below, a smoke-pool thick with faces swirled,
The mutinous omen. of an Under-world,
Defeated, plundered, blackened, but preparing,
E'en though that calm, white dominance fell down,
To overflow the rim, and, sunward faring,
Shape myriad perfect groups from slave and clown.
Or thus I read the symbol, though 'twas sent
To hound compunction on my wincing pride,
That dreamed of raceless brotherhood, content
Though all old Charm dissolved and Glory died.
For often signs will yield their deeper signs,
Virginal Bush, in your untrodden shrines,
Than where the craven ages' human clamour
Distorts the boldest oracle with fear,
Or where dissolving wizards dew with glamour
Arden, Broceliande, or Windermere.
Once while my mother by a spreading tree
Our church's sober rubric bade me con,
My vagrant eyes among the boughs would see
Forbidden wings and •wizard aprons on
Father's 'wee people' from their Irish glades
Brighten and darken with your lights and shades.
And I would only read again those stern leaves
For whispered bribe that, when their tale I told,
We would go and look for fairies in the fern-leaves
And red-capped leprechauns with crocks of gold.
Anon, my boyhood saw how Sunbursts flamed
Or filmy hinds lured on a pale Oisin,
Where lithe indignant saplings crowding claimed
The digger's ravage for their plundered queen:
And heard within yon lichened 'mullock-heap'
51
Lord Edward's waiting horsemen moan in sleep:
Or flew the fragrant path of swans consoling
Lir's exiled daughter wandering with me,
And traced below the Wattle River rolling
Exuberant and golden toward the sea.
Here, would the •wavering wings of heat uplift
Some promontory till the tree-crowned pile
Above a phantom sea would swooning drift,
St. Brendan's vision of the Winged Isle:
Anon, the isle divides again, again,
Till archipelagos poise o'er the main.
There, lazy fingers of a breeze have scattered
The distant blur of factory chimney smoke
hi poignant groups of all the young lives shattered
To feed the ravin of a piston-stroke!
Or when I read the tale of what you were
Beyond these hungry eyes' home-keeping view,
I peopled petrel rocks with Sirens fair,
In Maid Mirage the Fairy Morgan knew,
Steered Quetzalcoatl's skiff to coral coasts,
On Chambers' Pillar throned the Olympian hosts,
Heard in white sulphur-crested parrots' screeches
Remorseful Peris vent their hopeless rage,
Atlantis' borders traced on sunken beaches,
m Alcheringa found the Golden Age.
Sibyl and Siren, with alternate breaths
You read our foetal nation's boon and bane,
And lure to trysts of orgiastic Deaths
Adventurous love that listens to your strain:
Pelsarts and Vanderdeckens of the world
Circle your charms or at your feet are hurled:
And, Southern witch, whose glamour drew De Quiros
O'er half the earth for one unyielded kiss,
Were yours the arms that healed the scalded Eros
When Psyche's curious lamp darkened their bliss?
Ye, who would challenge when we claim to see
The bush alive with Northern wealth of wings,
Forget that at a common mother's knee
52
We learned, with you, the lore of Silent Things.
There is no New that is not older far
Than swirling cradle of the first-born star:
Our youngest hearts prolong the far pulsation
And churn the brine of the primordial sea:
The foetus writes the précis of Creation:
Australia is the whole world's legatee.
Imagination built her throne in us
Before your present bodies saw the sky:
Your myths were counters of our abacus,
And in your brain developed long our eye:
We from the misty folk have also sprung
Who saw the gnomes and heard the Ever Young:
Do Southern skies the fancy disinherit
Of moly flower and Deva-laden breeze?
Do nerves attuned by old defect and merit
Their timbre lose by crossing tropic seas?
All mysteries ye claim as yours alone
Have wafted secrets over oceans here:
Our living soil Antiquity hath sown
With just the corn and tares ye love and fear:
Romance and song enthral us just as you,
Nor change of zenith changes spirit too:
Our necks as yours are sore with feudal halters:
To the Pole ye know our compasses are set;
And shivering years that huddled round your altars
Beneath our stars auspicious tremble yet.
Who fenced the nymphs in European vales?
Or Pan tabooed from all but Oxford dreams?
Warned Shakespeare off from foreign Plutarch's tales?
Or tethered Virgil to Italian themes?
And when the body sailed from your control
Think ye we left behind in bond the soul?
Whate'er was yours is ours in equal measure,
The Temple was not built for you alone,
Altho' 'tis ours to grace the common treasure
With Lares and Penates of our own!
Ye stole yourselves from gardens fragrant long
53
The sprouting seed-pods of your choicest blooms,
And wove the splendid garments of your song
From Viking foam on grave Hebraic looms:
'Twas Roman nerve and rich Hellenic lymph
Changed your pale pixie to a nubile nymph:
Yea, breathed at dawn around Atlantis' islands,
Wind-home o'er some Hesperidean road,
The morning clouds on dim Accadian highlands
Spring-fed the Nile that over Hellas flowed!
As large-eyed Greek amid Sicilian dews
Saw Dis, as ne'er before, pursue the Maid,
Or, safe 'neath screening billows, Arethuse
Alpheus' rugged sleuth unsoiled evade:
We shall complete the tale ye left half-told,
Under the ocean lead your fountains old,
To slake our sceptic thirst with haunted water,
And tame our torrents with a wedding kiss,
Shall loose, mayhap, the spell on Ceres' daughter,
And show, unclouded, God in very Dis.
(Yet, there are moods and mornings when I hear,
Above the music of the Bush's breath,
The rush of alien breezes far and near
Drowning her oracles to very death:
Exotic battle-cries the silence mar,
Seductive perfumes drive the gum-scent far;
And organ-tones august a moment show me
Miltonic billows and Homeric gales
Until I feel the older worlds below me,
And all her wonder trembles, thins and fails.)
Yea, you are all that we may be, and yet
In us is all you are to be for aye!
The Giver of the gifts that we shall get?
An empty womb that waits the wedding day?
Thus drifting sense by age-long habit buoyed
Plays round the thought that knows all nature void!
And so, my song alternate would believe her
Idiot Bush and Daughter of the Sun,
A worthless gift apart from the receiver,
An empty womb, but in a Deathless One.
54
To shapes we would of Freedom, Truth and Joy
Shall we your willing plasm mould for man:
Afresh rebuild the world, and thus destroy
What only Ragnarok in Europe can:
There is no Light but in your dark blendes sleeps,
Drops from your stars or through your ether leaps:
Yea, you are Nature, Chaos since Creation,
Waiting what human Word to chord in song?
Matrix inert of what auspicious nation?
For what far bees your nectar hiving long?
Exhausted manas of the conquering North
Shall rise refreshed to vivid life again
At your approach, and in your lap pour forth
Grateful the gleanings of his mighty reign:
As, when a tropic heat-king southward crawls,
Blistering the ranges, till he hears the calls
Of some cold high-browed bride, her streaming tresses,
Sprinkled with rose-buds, make his wild eyes thrill
To such desire for her superb caresses
He yields his fiery treasures to her will.
'Where is Australia, singer, do you know?
These sordid farms and joyless factories,
Mephitic mines and lanes of pallid woe?
Those ugly towns and cities such as these
With incense sick to all unworthy power,
And all old sin in full malignant flower?
No! to her bourn her children still are faring:
She is a Temple that we are to build:
For her the ages have been long preparing:
She is a prophecy to be fulfilled!
All that we love in olden lands and lore
Was signal of her coming long ago!
Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More
And Plato's eyes were with her star aglow!
Who toiled for Truth, whate'er their countries were,
Who fought for Liberty, they yearned for her!
No corsair's gathering ground, or tryst for schemers,
55
No chapman Carthage to a huckster Tyre,
She is the Eldorado of old dreamers,
The Sleeping Beauty of the world's desire!
She is the scroll on which we are to write
Mythologies our own and epics new:
She is the port of our propitious flight
From Ur idolatrous and Pharaoh's crew.
She is our own, unstained, if worthy we,
By dream, or god, or star we would not see:
Her crystal beams all but the eagle dazzle;
Her wind-wide ways none but the strong-winged sail:
She is Eutopia, she is Hy-Brasil,
The watchers on the tower of morning hail I
Yet she shall be as we, the Potter, mould:
Altar or tomb, as we aspire, despair:
What wine we bring shall she, the chalice, hold:
What word we write shall she, the script, declare:
Bandage our eyes, she shall be Memphis, Spain:
Barter our souls, she shall be Tyre again:
And if we pour on her the red oblation
All o'er the world shall Asshur's buzzards throng:
Love-lit, her Chaos shall become Creation:
And dewed with dream, her silence flower in song.
~ Bernard O'Dowd,

IN CHAPTERS [39/39]



   16 Occultism
   5 Psychology
   5 Philosophy
   5 Christianity
   2 Mythology
   1 Poetry
   1 Fiction


   13 James George Frazer
   6 Carl Jung
   4 Plotinus
   2 Plato
   2 Joseph Campbell
   2 Jorge Luis Borges


   13 The Golden Bough
   5 The Secret Doctrine
   3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   3 Aion
   2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces


1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  inspired by communion with her divinity. Plutarch compares the
  legend with other tales of the loves of goddesses for mortal men,

1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  was cured of the disease. "Such is the nature," says Plutarch, "and
  such the temperament of the creature that it draws out and receives

1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  as Apollo the prophetess at Delphi. And Plutarch numbers the
  ecstasies of the orgiastic rites of Pan along with the ecstasy of

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Similar traditions can be found in Plutarch, 28 Diodorus, Jose-
  phus, 29 and Tacitus. 30 Sabaoth, the seventh archon, has the form
  --
  33 Plutarch, De hide et Osiride, in Moralia, pp. 77, 123. In ch. 31 Plutarch states
  that the legend of Set's flight on an ass and of the fathering of his two sons

1.09 - The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  from sea-fish," observes Plutarch. According to Clement of
  Alexandria, the inhabitants of Syene, Elephantine, and Oxy-
  rhynchus worshipped a fish. Plutarch 17 says it was the custom
  to eat a broiled fish before the door of one's house on the ninth
  --
  Gods of the Egyptians, II, p. 382; Plutarch, De Iside, cap. XLIX (Babbitt trans.,
  V.p. 19).

1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  (says Plutarch) they were hastening to put out a fire.
  Among the tribes of the Finnish-Ugrian stock in Europe the hea then

1.13 - The Kings of Rome and Alba, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  is confirmed by a statement of Plutarch that Egeria was one of the
  oak-nymphs whom the Romans believed to preside over every green

1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
   Plutarch. De Iside et O stride. In: Plutarch's M or alia. With an Eng-
  lish translation by Frank Cole Babbitt. (Loeb Classical Library.)
  --
  . Quaestiones convivales. In: Plutarchi Moralia. Edited by
  C. Hubert and others. Vol. IV. Leipzig, 1925.

1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  mythical Numa, the type of the priestly king, Plutarch observes that
  "his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of

1.26 - Sacrifice of the Kings Son, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  sacrifice which occurred in Plutarch's time at Orchomenus, a very
  ancient city of Boeotia, distant only a few miles across the plain
  --
  In Plutarch's lifetime the right was actually exercised by a priest
  Zoilus. The family thus liable to furnish at least one human victim

1.38 - The Myth of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  The story of Osiris is told in a connected form only by Plutarch,
  whose narrative has been confirmed and to some extent amplified in

1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the solar year. At all events Plutarch, writing about the end of the
  first century, implies that they were then fixed, not movable; for
  --
  observed in Plutarch's time about the winter solstice, when the gilt
  cow was carried seven times round the temple. A great feature of the
  --
  other sources. Thus Plutarch tells us that Osiris was murdered on
  the seventeenth of the month Athyr, and that the Egyptians
  --
  answers exactly to the other indications given by Plutarch, who says
  that at the time of the festival the Nile was sinking, the north
  --
  the ceremonies described by Plutarch was to represent dramatically,
  first, the search for the dead body of Osiris, and, second, its

1.42 - Osiris and the Sun, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the Egyptians. Again, Plutarch, a very keen student of comparative
  religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of

1.43 - Dionysus, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his
  wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the

1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  of a god except that the beast was the god's enemy; or, as Plutarch
  puts it, not that which is dear to the gods, but that which is the
  --
  limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years; but it cannot
  always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls have been

1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  custom is supported to some extent by the evidence of Plutarch, who
  speaks of the ceremony as "the greatest of purifications."

1.58 - Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  scapegoat. In Plutarch's native town of Chaeronea a ceremony of this
  kind was performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by
  --
  wealth and health." When Plutarch held the office of chief
  magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town

1f.lovecraft - The Tomb, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   translation of Plutarchs Lives in the book-filled attic of my home.
   Reading the life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage

1.ww - Dion [See Plutarch], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  object:1.ww - Dion [See Plutarch]
  author class:William Wordsworth

2.01 - The Road of Trials, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  12 - Plutarch, Themistocles, 26; Jezower, op. cit., p. 18.
  Stekel, Fortschritte und Technik der Traumdeutung, p. 150.

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [154] Luna, as we have seen, is the counterpart of Sol, cold,168 moist, feebly shining or dark, feminine, corporeal, passive. Accordingly her most significant role is that of a partner in the coniunctio. As a feminine deity her radiance is mild; she is the lover. Pliny calls her a womanly and gentle star. She is the sister and bride, mother and spouse of the sun.169 To illustrate the sun-moon relationship the alchemists often made use of the Song of Songs (Canticles),170 as in the confabulation of the lover with the beloved in Aurora Consurgens.171 In Athens the day of the new moon was considered favourable for celebrating marriages, and it still is an Arabian custom to marry on this day; sun and moon are marriage partners who embrace on the twenty-eighth day of the month.172 According to these ancient ideas the moon is a vessel of the sun: she is a universal receptacle, of the sun in particular173; and she was called infundibulum terrae (the funnel of the earth), because she receives and pours out174 the powers of heaven. Again, it is said that the moisture of the moon (lunaris humor) takes up the sunlight,175 or that Luna draws near to the sun in order to extract from him, as from a fountain, universal form and natural life; 176 she also brings about the conception of the universal seed of the sun in the quintessence, in the belly and womb of nature.177 In this respect there is a certain analogy between the moon and the earth, as stated in Plutarch and Macrobius.178 Aurora Consurgens says that the earth made the moon,178a and here we should remember that Luna also signifies silver. But the statements of the alchemists about Luna are so complex that one could just as well say that silver is yet another synonym or symbol for the arcanum Luna. Even so, a remark like the one just quoted may have been a reference to the way in which ore was supposed to have been formed in the earth: the earth receives the powers of the stars, and in it the sun generates the gold, etc. The Aurora consurgens therefore equates the earth with the bride: I am that land of the holy promise,179 or at any rate it is in the earth that the hierosgamos takes place.180 Earth and moon coincide in the albedo, for on the one hand the sublimated or calcined earth appears as terra alba foliata, the sought-for good, like whitest snow,181 and on the other hand Luna, as mistress of the albedo,182 is the femina alba of the coniunctio183 and the mediatrix of the whitening.184 The lunar sulphur is white, as already mentioned. The plenilunium (full moon) appears to be especially important: When the moon shines in her fulness the rabid dog, the danger that threatens the divine child,185 is chased away. In Senior the full moon is the arcane substance.
  [155] In ancient tradition Luna is the giver of moisture and ruler of the water-sign Cancer (
  --
  [166] Besides the connection between Luna and intellect we must also consider their relation to Mercurius, for in astrology and mythology Mercurius is the divine factor that has most to do with Epinoia. The connections between them in alchemy have classical antecedents. Leaving aside the relation of Hermes to the Nous, I will only mention that in Plutarch Hermes sits in the moon and goes round with it (just as Heracles does in the sun).233 In the magic papyri, Hermes is invoked as follows: O Hermes, ruler of the world, thou who dwellest in the heart, circle of the moon, round and square.234
  [167] In alchemy Mercurius is the rotundum par excellence. Luna is formed of his cold and moist nature, and Sol of the hot and dry;235 alternatively she is called the proper substance of Mercurius.236 From Luna comes the aqua Mercurialis or aqua permanens;237 with her moisture, like Mercurius, she brings the slain dragon to life.238 As we have seen, the circle of the moon is mentioned in the Super arborem Aristotelis, where a stork, as it were calling itself the circle of the moon, sits on a tree that is green within instead of without.239 Here it is worth pointing out that the soul, whose connection with the moon has already been discussed, was also believed to be round. Thus Caesarius of Heisterbach says that the soul has a spherical nature, after the likeness of the globe of the moon.240
  --
   in Plutarch. On the first day of the month of Phamenoth, Osiris enters into Selene, and this is evidently equivalent to the synodos in the spring. Thus they make the power of Osiris to be fixed in the moon.371 Selene, Plutarch says, is male-female and is impregnated by Helios. I mention these statements because they show that the moon has a double light, outside a feminine one but inside a masculine one which is hidden in it as a fire. Luna is really the mother of the sun, which means, psychologically, that the unconscious is pregnant with consciousness and gives birth to it. It is the night, which is older than the day:
  Part of the darkness which gave birth to light,

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  , matrix of all creatures.439 The prima materia is often called aqua pontica. The salt that comes from the mineral of the sea is by its very nature bitter, but the bitterness is due also to the impurity of the imperfect body. This apparent contradiction is explained by the report of Plutarch that the Egyptians regarded the sea as something impure and untrustworthy (
  ), and as the domain of Typhon (Set); they called salt the spume of Typhon.440 In his Philosophia reformata, Mylius mentions sea-spume together with the purged or purified sea, rock-salt, the bird, and Luna as equivalent synonyms for the lapis occultus.441 Here the impurity of the sea is indirectly indicated by the epithets purged or purified. The sea-spume is on a par with the salt andof particular interestwith the bird, naturally the bird of Hermes, and this throws a sudden light on the above passage from Rosinus, about the bird with bitterness in its throat. The bird is a parallel of salt because salt is a spirit,442 a volatile substance, which the alchemists were wont to conceive as a bird.

6.05 - THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE PROCEDURE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [703] This peculiar mixture was then to be united with the heaven of the red or white wine or of Tartarus. The caelum or blue tincture, as we have seen, was concocted from the phlegm of the wine or sublimated from the wine-stone. Just as the phlegm is the residue, in the bottom of the vessel, of the evaporated wine, so Tartarus, the underworld and realm of the dead, is the sediment or precipitate of a once living world. In Khunrath, Sal tartar mundi maioris is identical with sal Saturni and sal Veneris.120 It containsor is the scintilla Animae Mundi.121 Tartar is the sal sapientiae.122 Sal saturni refers to Kronos enchained in Tartarus. Plutarch identifies Typhon with Tartarus.123 This is in agreement with the malefic nature of Saturn. Sal tartari therefore has a sinister, underworldly nuance reminiscent of death and hell. Saturn (lead) is one of the best known synonyms for the prima materia, and hence is the matrix of the filius Philosophorum. This is the sought-for celestial substance, the caelum, etc.
  [704] What are we to think of this most peculiar philtre? Did Dorn really mean that these magic herbs should be mixed together and that the air-coloured quintessence should be distilled from the Tartarus, or was he using these secret names and procedures to express a moral meaning? My conjecture is that he meant both, for it is clear that the alchemists did in fact operate with such substances and thought-processes, just as, in particular, the Paracelsist physicians used these remedies and reflections in their practical work. But if the adept really concocted such potions in his retort, he must surely have chosen his ingredients on account of their magical significance. He worked, accordingly, with ideas, with psychic processes and states, but referred to them under the name of the corresponding substances. With the honey the pleasure of the senses and the joy of life went into the mixture, as well as the secret fear of the poison, the deadly danger of worldly entanglements. With the Chelidonia the highest meaning and value, the self as the total personality, the healing and whole-making medicine which is recognized even by modern psycho therapy, was combined with spiritual and conjugal love, symbolized by rosemary; and, lest the lower, chthonic element be lacking, Mercurialis added sexuality, together with the red slave moved by passion,124 symbolized by the red lily, and the addition of blood threw in the whole soul. All this was united with the azure quintessence, the anima mundi extracted from inert matter, or the God-image imprinted on the worlda mandala produced by rotation;125 that is to say the whole of the conscious man is surrendered to the self, to the new centre of personality which replaces the former ego. Just as, for the mystic, Christ takes over the leadership of consciousness and puts an end to a merely ego-bound existence, so the filius macrocosmi, the son of the great luminaries and of the dark womb of the earth, enters the realm of the psyche and seizes the human personality, not only in the shining heights of consciousness but in the dark depths which have not yet comprehended the light that appeared in Christ. The alchemist was well aware of the great shadow which Christianity obviously had not assimilated, and he therefore felt impelled to create a saviour from the womb of the earth as an analogy and complement of Gods son who came down from above.

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  inhabited the Palus Maeotis (between 45 [[degrees]] and 50 [[degrees]] latitude). Plutarch explains that
  they were but a small portion of a great nation driven away by the Scythians, which nation stopped
  --
  learn from Plutarch that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the
  fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his
  --
  40,000 years ago, at the great festival in commemoration of that Magnus Annus, of which Plutarch was
  speaking. Since that year (40,000 years ago) there has been a retrograde motion of the equator, and

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  birth to lightning and thunderbolts. . . . . This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch's
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-2-07.htm (7 von 10) [06.05.2003 03:36:47]
  --
  world," Plutarch tells us (in De anim. procr., 1027) "consisted of a double quaternary." This statement
  corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric theologies, of the lower Tetraktis. For: -"The quaternary of the intellectual world (the world of Mahat) is T'Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle;
  --
  and Plutarch both speak of it (Hist. Nat. Lib. VII., c. 48, Vol. III., p. 185, and Life of Numa, 16); but
  does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew astronomy as well as any other people did, made

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  para. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult the Zends, vol II., p. 228, and Plutarch De Iside, as
  compared by Layard, Academie des Inscriptions, 1854, Vol. XV.
  --
  Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch
  (Isis and Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of Osiris into

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  forced it on Scientific notice. "An idea," says Plutarch, "is a being incorporeal, which has no
  subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the
  --
  theories, but they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted
  from his Life of Sulla, saying: "One day when the sky was serene . . . a sound was heard in it . . . of a

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  the pagan Plutarch, who shows that "May is sacred to Maia ([[Maia]]) or Vesta" (Aulus-Gellius, word
  Maia) -- our mother-earth, our nurse and nourisher personified.

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  In the Feast of the Seven Sages, Plutarch humorously tells
  that one of the shepherds of Periander, a tyrant of Corinth,
  --
  this strange elevation. Earlier, Plutarch suggested that Chimera was the name of a pirate captain who adorned his ships
  with the images of a lion, a goat, and a snake.
  --
  frightening and that Plutarch identifies him with the Titan
  who fathered the Chimera.
  --
  immortal or, as Plutarch obscurely intimates, lived for
  above , years. Among these were the Nereids and the

BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  [74] Plutarch's Life of Cato, 72.
  [75] 1 Cor. ii. 11.
  --
  [182] Plutarch's Numa, c. 8.
  [183] Written in the year 415.
  --
  [260] An interesting account of the changes made in the Roman year by Numa is given in Plutarch's life of that king. Ovid also (Fasti, ii.) explains the derivation of February, telling us that it was the last month of the old year, and took its name from the lustrations performed then: "Februa Romani dixere piamina patres."
  [261] Ennius, in Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 18.
  --
  [288] Plutarch's Numa; Livy, xl. 29.
  [289] Comp. Lactantius, Instit. i. 6.
  --
  [329] See Plutarch, on the Cessation of Oracles.
  [330] The De Deo Socratis.
  --
  [463] Plutarch (De Plac. Phil. i. 3, and iv. 3) tells us that this opinion was held by Anaximenes of Miletus, the followers of Anaxagoras, and many of the Stoics. Diogenes the Cynic, as well as Diogenes of Apollonia, seems to have adopted the same opinion. See Zeller's Stoics, pp. 121 and 199.
  [464] "Ubi lux non est, tenebr sunt, non quia aliquid sunt tenebr, sed ipsa lucis absentia tenebr dicuntur."Aug. De Gen. contra Man. 7.

ENNEAD 02.09 - Against the Gnostics; or, That the Creator and the World are Not Evil., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  128 As was taught by Himerius; see also Plutarch and Themistius.
  129 As Numenius said, fr. 26.3.
  --
  268 Such as Numenius, 42, and Plutarch, de Isis et Osiris, Fr. Tr. 381.
  269 From "a-polus."

ENNEAD 03.07 - Of Time and Eternity., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  58 Plutarch, Dogm. Philos. i. 17; Stob. Eclog. i. 18.
  59 Arist. Topic. iv. 2; de Gener. et Cor. i. 10; Ravaisson, EMA, i. 422.
  --
  62 See Plutarch, "Whether Wickedness Renders One Unhappy."
  63 As said Numenius, 44.
  --
  226 As the Stoics think, Plutarch, Plac. Phil. iv. 11.
  227 As Aristotle would say, de Anima, iii. 3.

ENNEAD 04.02 - How the Soul Mediates Between Indivisible and Divisible Essence., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  56 Plutarch, de Placitis Philosoph, iii. 8. The Stoic definition of sensation being that senses are spirits stretched (by relays with "tension") from the directing principle to the organs.
  57 de Nat. Hom. 2.
  --
  71 As thought Chrysippus, in Plutarch, de Stoic. Repugnant.
  72 See ii. 4, 16.
  --
  222 As said Heraclitus, Plutarch, Banquet, iv. 4.
  223 See iv. 7.10.
  --
  360 Plutarch, de Plac. Phil. v. 21; Cicero, de Nat. Deor. ii. 11. The "predominating principle" had appeared in Plato's Timaeus, p. 41.
  361 Of the Timaeus, p. 35.

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  The Platonists hold different opinions. Some, like Plotinos and Porphyry, reduce to a single order and idea the different functions and faculties of life; others, like Numenius, imagine them to be opposed, as if in a struggle; while others, like Atticus and Plutarch, bring harmony out of the struggle.
  E. Ammonius Saccas.
  --
  The next step was taken by Plutarch. The evil demons, had, in Stoic phraseology, been called "physical;" and so, in regard to matter, they came to stand in the relation of soul to body. Original matter, therefore, became two-fold; matter itself, and its moving principle, "the soul of matter." This was identified with the worse World-soul by a development, or historical event, which was the ordering of the cosmos, or, creation.
  This then was the state of affairs at the advent of Numenius. Although his chief interest lay in practical comparative religion, he tried, philosophically, to return to a mythical "original" Platonism or Pythagoreanism. What Plato did for earlier Greek speculation, Numenius did for post-Platonic development. He harked back to the latter Platonic stage, which taught1291 the evil world-Soul. He included the achievements of Plutarch, the "soul of matter," and the trine division of a separate principle, such as Providence. To the achievement of Xenocrates he was drawn by two powerful interests, the Egyptian, Hermetic, Serapistic, in connection with the evil demons; and the Pythagorean, in connection with the Indefinite-duality. Thus Numenius's History of the Platonic Succession is not a delusion; Numenius really did sum up the positive Platonic progress, not omitting even Maximus of Tyre's philosophical hierarchic explanation of the emanative or participative streaming forth of the Divine. But Numenius was not merely a philosopher: of this gathering of Platonic achievements he made a religion. In this he was also following the footsteps of Pythagoras, who limited his doctrines to a group of students. But Numenius did not merely copy Pythagoras. Numenius modernized him, connecting up the Platonic doctrinal aggregate with the mystery-rites current in his own day. Nor did Numenius shirk any unpleasant responsibilities of a restorer of Platonism: he continued the traditional Academico-Stoical feud. Strange to say, the last great Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (A.D. 135151) hailed from Numenius's home-town, Apamea, so that this Stoic feud may have been forced on Numenius from home personalities or conditions. It would seem that in Numenius and Posidonius we have a re-enactment of the tragedy of Greek philosophy on a Syrian theatre, where dogmatic Stoicism died, and Platonism admitted Oriental ideas.
  Apamea, however, had not yet ended its role in the development of thought. Numenius's pupil, Amelius, had gathered, copied, and learned by heart his master's works. It was in Apamea that he adopted as son Hostilianius-Hesychius. After a twenty-four years' sojourn in Rome he returned to Apamea, and was dwelling there still at the time of the death of Plotinos,1292 with whom he had spent that quarter of a century. Here then we have a historical basis for a connection between Numenius and Plotinos, which we have elsewhere endeavored to demonstrate from inner grounds.
  --
  What Plato did for early Greek philosophy, what Numenius did for post-Platonic thought, that Proclus Diadochus, the "Successor," did for Plotinos and his followers. For the first time since Numenius we find again a comparative method. By this time religion and philosophy have fused in magic, and so, instead of a comparative religion, we have a comparative philosophy. Proclus was the first genuine commentator, quoting authorities on all sides. He was sufficient of a philosopher to grasp Neoplatonism as a school of thought; and far from paying any attention to Ammonius, as recent philosophy has done, as source of Neoplatonism, he traces the movement as far as Plutarch, calling him the "father of us all," inasmuch as he introduced the conception of "hypostasis." Evidently, Proclus looked upon this as the centre of Neoplatonic development, and therefore we shall be justified in a closer study of this conception; and we may even say that its historic destiny was a continuation of the main stream of creative Greek philosophy; or, if you prefer, of Platonism, or Noumenianism, or even Plotinian thought.
  1294 Did Greek philosophy die with Proclus? The political changes of the time forced alteration of dialect and position; but the accumulations of mental achievements could not perish. This again we owe to Proclus. Besides being the first great commentator he precipitated his most valuable achievements in logical form, in analytic arrangement, in the form of crystal-clear propositions, theorems, demonstrations, and corollaries. Such a highly abstract form was inevitable, inasmuch as Numenius had turned away from Aristotelian observation of nature. Just like the Hebrew thinkers, who finally became commentators and abstract theorizers, nothing else was left for a philosophy without connection with experiment, when whittled down by the keenest intellects of the times.
  --
  This new feud between Plotinos and the Gnostics is however just as illusory as the earlier one between Numenius and the Stoics. It was merely a matter of dialects. Plotinos indeed found fault with the Gnostics for making divisions within the Divinity; but wherever he himself is considering the divinity minutely, he, just as much as the Gnostics, is compelled to draw distinctions, even though he avoided acknowledged divisions by borrowing from Plutarch a new, non-Platonic, non-Numenian, but Aristotelian, Stoic (Cornutus and Sextus) and still Alexandrian (Philo, Septuagint, Lucian) term "hypostasis."
  The difference he pretended to find between the1301 Gnostic distinctions within the Divinity and his new term hypostasis was that the former introduced manifoldness into the divinity, by splitting Him,483 thus allowing the influence of matter to pervade the pure realm of Being. Hypostasis, on the contrary, wholly existed within the realm of pure Being, and was no more than a trend, a direction, a characterization, a function, a face, or orientation of activity of the unaffected unity of Being. Thus the divinity retained its unity, and still could be active in several directions, without admixture of what philosophy had till then recognized as constituting manifoldness. But reflection shows that this is a mere quibble, an evasion, a paralogism, a quaternio terminorum, a pun. How it came about we shall attempt to show below.
  --
  This intellectual dishonesty must not however be foisted on Aristotle485 or Plutarch. The latter, for instance,486 adopted this term only to denote the primary and original characteristics (or distinctions within) existing things, from a comparative study of Aristotle's "de Anima," and Plato's "Phaedo."487 These five hypostases were the divinity, mind, soul, forms immanent in inorganic nature, "hexis," in Stoic dialect, and to matter, as apart from these forms.
  So important to Neoplatonism did this term seem to Proclus, that he did not hesitate to say that Plutarch, by the use thereof, became "our first forefa ther." He therefore develops it further. Among the hidden and1302 intelligible gods are three hypostases. The first is characterized by the Good; it thinks the Good itself, and dwells with the paternal Monad. The second is characterized by knowledge, and resides in the first thought; while the third is characterized by beauty, and dwells with the most beautiful of the intelligible. They are the causes from which proceed three monads which are self-existent but under the form of a unity, and as in a germ, in their cause. Where they manifest, they take a distinct form: faith, truth, and love (Cousin's title: "Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien"). This trinity pervades all the divine worlds.
  In order to understand the attitude of Plotinos on the subject, we must try to put ourselves in his position. In the first place, on Porphyry's own admission, he had added to Platonism Peripatetic and Stoic views. From Aristotle his chief borrowings were the categories of form and matter, and the distinction between potentiality and actuality,488 as well as the Aristotelian psychology of various souls. To the Stoics he was drawn by their monism, which led him to drop the traditional Academico-Stoic feud, or rather to take the side of the Stoics against Numenius the Platonist dualist and the dualistic successors, the Gnostics. But there was a difference between the Stoics and Plotinos. The Stoics assimilated spirit to matter, while Plotinos, reminiscent of Plato, preferred to assimilate matter to spirit. Still, he used their terminology, and categories, including the conception of a hypostasis, or form of existence. With this equipment, he held to the traditional Platonic trinity of the "Letters," the King, the intellect, and the soul. Philosophically, however, he had received from Numenius the inheritance of a double name of the Divinity, Being and Essence. As a thinker, he was therefore forced to accommodate Numenius to Plato, and by adding to Numenius's name of the divinity, to complete Numenius's theology by Numenius's own1303 cosmology. This then he did by adding as third hypostasis the Aristotelian dynamic energy.
  --
  This is the most definite statement of Plotinos's solution of the problem; other references thereto are abundant. So we have a trinity of energy, being and essence,490 and each of us, like the world-Soul has an Eros which is essence and hypostasis.491 Reason is a hypostasis after the nous, and Aphrodite gains an hypostasis in the Ousia.492 The One is intellect, the intelligible, and ousia; or, energy, being, and the intelligible (essence).493 The soul is activity.494 The soul is the third God,495 we are the third rank proceeding from the upper undivided Nature,496 the whole being God, nous, and essence. The Nous is activity, and the First essence. There are three stages of the Good: the King, the nous, and the soul.497 We find energy,1304498 thinking and being, then499 the soul, the nous, and the One. We find Providence threefold (as in Plutarch)500 and three ranks of Gods, demons and world-life.501 Elsewhere, untheologically, or, rather, merely philosophically, he speaks of the hypostasis of wisdom.502
  Chaignet's summary of this is503 that504 Plotinos holds that every force in the intelligible is both Being and Substance simultaneously; and reciprocally that no Being, could be conceived without hypostasis, or directed force. Again,505 the world, the universe of things, contains three natures or divine hypostases, soul, mind and unity; which indeed are found in our own nature, and of which the divinest is unity or divinity.
  --
  Now Plotinos, as we remember, found fault with the Gnostics in that they taught distinctions within the divinity.506 He would therefore be disposed to remove from within the divinity those distinctions of Plotinic, Plutarchian, Numenian, or Gnostic theology; although he himself in early times did not scruple to speak of a hypostasis of wisdom, or of Eros, or other matter he might be considering. Such terms of Numenius or Amelius as he seems to ignore are the various Demiurges; the three Plutarchian Providences he himself still uses. Still, all these terms he would be disposed to eradicate from within the divinity.
  As a constructive metaphysician, however, he could not well get along without some titles for the different phases of the divinity; and even if he dispensed with the old names, there would still remain as their underlying1305 support the reality or substance of the distinction. So he removed the offensive, aggressive, historically known and recognized terms, while leaving their underlying substances, or supports. Now "substance" had become "substances," and to differentiate these it was necessary to interpret them as differing forms of existence. The change was most definitely made by Athanasius, who at a synod in Alexandria, in A.D. 362,507 fastened on the church, as synonymous with hypostasis the popular term "prosopon" or "face." That this was an innovation appears from the fact that the Nicene Council had stated that it was heretical to say that Christ was of a hypostasis different from that of the Father, in which case the word evidently meant still the original underlying (singular) substance. With this official definition in vogue, the original (singular) substance became forgotten, and it became possible to speak in the plural, of three faces, as indeed Plotinos had done.
  --
  God is supreme king.615 Eternity is now, but neither past nor future.616 The King in heaven is surrounded by leisure.617 The Good is above Being;618 the divinity is the unity above the "Being and Essence;619 and connected with this is the unitary interpretation of the name A-pollo,620 following in the footsteps of Plutarch. Nevertheless, the inferior divinity traverses the heavens,621 in a circular motion.622 While Numenius does not specify this motion as circular,623 it is implied, inasmuch as the creator's passing through the heavens must have followed their circular course. With this perfect motion is connected the peculiar Numenian doctrine of inexhaustible giving,624 which gave a philosophical basis for the old simile of radiation of light,625 so that irradiation is the method of creation,626 and this is not far removed from emanationism. This process consists of the descent of the intelligible into the material, or, as Numenius puts it, that both the intelligible and the perceptible participate in the ideas.627 Thus intelligence is the uniting principle that holds together the bodies whose tendency is to split up, and scatter,628 making a leakage or waste,629 which process invades even the divinity.630 This uniting of scattering elements produces a mixture or mingling,608 of matter and reason,631 which, however, is limited to the energies of the existent, not to the existent itself.632 All things are in a flow,633 and the whole all is in all.634 The divinity creates by glancing at the intelligence above,635 as a pilot.636 The divinity is split by over-attention to its charges.1319637
  This leads us over to consideration of the soul. The chief effort of Numenius is a polemic against the materialism of the Stoics, and to it Plotinos devotes a whole book.638 All souls, even the lowest, are immortal.639 Even qualities are incorporeal.640 The soul, therefore, remains incorporeal.641 The soul, however, is divisible.642 This explains the report that Numenius taught not various parts of the soul,643 but two souls, which would be opposed by Plotinos in his polemic against the Stoics,644 but taught in another place.645 Such divisibility is indeed implied in the formation of presentation as a by-product,646 or a "common part."647 Moreover, the soul has to choose its own demon, or guardian divinity.648 Salvation as a goal appears in Numenius,649 but not in Plotinos, who opposes the Gnostic idea of the "saved souls,"650 though elsewhere he speaks of the paths of the musician,651 lover652 and philosopher653 in reaching ecstasy.654 Still both Gnostics and Plotinos insisted on the need of a savior.655 Memory is actualization of the soul.656 In the highest ecstasy the soul is alone with the alone.657
  --
  8 In Plutarch, of Wickedness, and in Seneca, de Tranquil, Animi, 14.
  9 De Providentia, 3.
  --
  59 As said Chrysippus in Plutarch, de Comm. Not. adv. Stoicos, 13.
  60 Mentioned by Plato in his Phaedrus, p. 248, Cary, 59; Republ. v. p. 451, Cary, 2; and in the famous hymn of Cleanthes, Stobaeus Ecl. Phys. i. 3.

Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
  The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen. Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beautya worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attri buted to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was possible in a great household of slaves.
  It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.' We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
  --
  (Compare Hoeck's Creta and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier in Ersch and Grueber's Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores; Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)
  The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable than that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the first of the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with the slight sketch of him in the Protagoras. He is the impersonation of lawlessness'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the city,' yet not without a certain generosity which gained the hearts of men,strangely fascinated by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which might have been either the destruction or salvation of Athens. The dramatic interest of the character is heightened by the recollection of his after history. He seems to have been present to the mind of Plato in the description of the democratic man of the Republic (compare also Alcibiades 1).

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
  of the Moon Plutarch, who took a great interest in science and particu-
  larly in astronomy, wrote that the moon was of solid stuff, like the

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  5) When one ceases to gain, one begins to lose. What matters is not to advance quickly, but to be always advancing. ~ Plutarch
  6) The advance each individual can make corresponds to the excellence he has been able to acquire, and he can only approach his goal by virtue of his self-preparation. ~ Farid-uddin-attar
  --
  15) In vain are you rich if you do not quell your passions; if an insatiable cupidity eats you up, if you are the prey of fears and anxieties, of what use to you is your opulence?. ~ Plutarch
  16) Mortify therefore covetousness, which is idolatry. ~ Colossians III. 5
  --
  8) Is it from without that there can come to a man the sweetness and the charm of his life? Is it not rather from the wisdom of his virtues that flow as from a happy source his real pleasures and his real joys? ~ Plutarch
  9) Whoever gives himself up to rational meditations, finds very soon the joy in all that is good. He sees that riches and beauty are impermanent and wisdom the most precious of jewels. ~ Fo-shu-hing-tsan-king

The Theologians, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  than the Serpent. . . That night, Aurelian turned the pages of Plutarch's
  ancient dialogue on the cessation of the oracles; in the twenty-ninth
  --
  out. Plutarch has related that Julius Caesar wept for the death of Pompey;
  Aurelian did not weep for the death of John, but he felt what a man would

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  That there were only five regular solids was already known to the ancients, and out of the surfaces which he has formed Plato proceeds to generate the four first of the five. He perhaps forgets that he is only putting together surfaces and has not provided for their transformation into solids. The first solid is a regular pyramid, of which the base and sides are formed by four equilateral or twenty-four scalene triangles. Each of the four solid angles in this figure is a little larger than the largest of obtuse angles. The second solid is composed of the same triangles, which unite as eight equilateral triangles, and make one solid angle out of four plane anglessix of these angles form a regular octahedron. The third solid is a regular icosahedron, having twenty triangular equilateral bases, and therefore 120 rectangular scalene triangles. The fourth regular solid, or cube, is formed by the combination of four isosceles triangles into one square and of six squares into a cube. The fifth regular solid, or dodecahedron, cannot be formed by a combination of either of these triangles, but each of its faces may be regarded as composed of thirty triangles of another kind. Probably Plato notices this as the only remaining regular polyhedron, which from its approximation to a globe, and possibly because, as Plutarch remarks, it is composed of 12 x 30 = 360 scalene triangles (Platon. Quaest.), representing thus the signs and degrees of the Zodiac, as well as the months and days of the year, God may be said to have 'used in the delineation of the universe.' According to Plato earth was composed of cubes, fire of regular pyramids, air of regular octahedrons, water of regular icosahedrons. The stability of the last three increases with the number of their sides.
  The elements are supposed to pass into one another, but we must remember that these transformations are not the transformations of real solids, but of imaginary geometrical figures; in other words, we are composing and decomposing the faces of substances and not the substances themselvesit is a house of cards which we are pulling to pieces and putting together again (compare however Laws). Yet perhaps Plato may regard these sides or faces as only the forms which are impressed on pre-existent matter. It is remarkable that he should speak of each of these solids as a possible world in itself, though upon the whole he inclines to the opinion that they form one world and not five. To suppose that there is an infinite number of worlds, as Democritus (Hippolyt. Ref. Haer. I.) had said, would be, as he satirically observes, 'the characteristic of a very indefinite and ignorant mind.'

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun plutarch

The noun plutarch has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
                  
1. Plutarch ::: (Greek biographer who wrote Parallel Lives (46?-120 AD))


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun plutarch

1 sense of plutarch                          

Sense 1
Plutarch
   INSTANCE OF=> biographer
     => writer, author
       => communicator
         => person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
           => organism, being
             => living thing, animate thing
               => whole, unit
                 => object, physical object
                   => physical entity
                     => entity
           => causal agent, cause, causal agency
             => physical entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun plutarch
                                    


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun plutarch

1 sense of plutarch                          

Sense 1
Plutarch
   INSTANCE OF=> biographer




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun plutarch

1 sense of plutarch                          

Sense 1
Plutarch
  -> biographer
   => autobiographer
   => hagiographer, hagiographist, hagiologist
   HAS INSTANCE=> Plutarch
   HAS INSTANCE=> Strachey, Lytton Strachey, Giles Lytton Strachey




--- Grep of noun plutarch
plutarch



IN WEBGEN [10000/31]

Wikipedia - Parallel Lives -- Biographies of famous Greeks and Romans by Plutarch
Wikipedia - Plutarch of Athens
Wikipedia - Plutarch of Byzantium
Wikipedia - Plutarch of Chaeronea
Wikipedia - Plutarch -- Hellenistic Greek biographer, philosopher, & essayist
Wikipedia - Pseudo-Plutarch
Plutarch ::: Born: 45; Died: 120; Occupation: Biographer;
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18517332-philosophical-historical-studies-on-plutarch
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26198148-the-plutarch-project-volume-one
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26863687-the-plutarch-primer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/279456.Plutarch_s_Lives
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29454207-the-plutarch-project-volume-two
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30123244-plutarch-s-lives
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34427825-the-plutarch-project-volume-three
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38590371-plutarch-s-lives
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39966405-the-plutarch-project-volume-four
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/415634.Plutarch_s_Lives
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44429133-the-plutarch-project-volume-five
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783850-plutarch-s-lives
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/31015.Plutarch
Goodreads author - Plutarch
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries#Plutarch
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Plutarch_of_Byzantium
selforum - plutarch plotinus petrarch pascal
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - plutarch
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Plutarch
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Plutarch
https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/Plutarch_Heavensbee
Plutarch
Plutarch's Staff
Pseudo-Plutarch



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