"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."

"Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades."

"As those persons who despair of ever being rich make little account of small expenses, thinking that little added to a little will never make any great sum."

"I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up."

"There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice."

"It is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions."

"Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises."

"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.""

"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."

"Leo Byzantius said, "What would you do, if you saw my wife, who scarce reaches up to my knees?… Yet," went he on, "as little as we are, when we fall out with each other, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.""

"Antiphanes said merrily that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible; so that the words spoken in winter articulated next summer."

"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. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them."

"An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave."

"'Tis a wise saying, Drive on your own track."

"They relate of Diogenes of Sinope, when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake, and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? Do your leavings give this mouse a sumptuous meal, while you, the gentleman, wail and lament because you are not getting drunk yonder and reclining on soft and luxurious couches?" Whenever such depressions of mind are not frequent, and the mind when they take place quickly recovers from them, after having put them to flight as it were, and when such annoyance and distraction is easily got rid of, then one may consider one's progress in virtue as a certainty."

"He was a man, which, as Plato saith, is a very inconstant creature."

"A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can.""

"By these criteria let Alexander also be judged! For from his words, from his deeds, and from the instruction' which he imparted, it will be seen that he was indeed a philosopher."

"Pittacus said, "Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only"."

"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."

"Xenophanes said, "I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.""

"As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity.""

"Euripides was wont to say, "Silence is an answer to a wise man.""

"Like the man who threw a stone at a bitch, but hit his step-mother, on which he exclaimed, "Not so bad!""

"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?""

"Τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀποστρέφεσθαι."

"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?""

"The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds."

"Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies."

"That proverbial saying, "Ill news goes quick and far.""

"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.""

"Custom is almost a second nature."

"Remember what Simonides said,—that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken."

"That remiss and slow-paced justice (as Euripides describes it) that falls upon the wicked by accident, by reason of its uncertainty, ill-timed delay, and disorderly motion, seems rather to resemble chance than providence. So that I cannot conceive what benefit there is in these millstones of the Gods which are said to grind so late, as thereby celestial punishment is obscured, and the awe of evil doing rendered vain and despicable."

"Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.""

"Anacharsis said a man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favours and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind."

"Have in readiness this saying of Solon, "But we will not give up our virtue in exchange for their wealth.""

"The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education."

"Said Periander, "Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.""

"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!""

"Socrates said, "Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.""

"According to the proverb, the best things are the most difficult."

"Whenever we begin so much to love good men that we deem happy, "not only," as Plato says, "the temperate man himself, but also the man who hears the words that flow from his wise lips," and even admire and are pleased with his figure and walk and look and smile, and desire to adapt ourselves to his model and to stick closely to him, then may we think that we are making genuine progress. Still more will this be the case, if we admire the good not only in prosperity, but like lovers who admire even the lispings and paleness of those in their flower, as the tears and dejection of Panthea in her grief and affliction won the affections of Araspes, so we fear neither the exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our love even under such trials, and join her, ever chanting that line of Euripides, "Unto the noble everything is good.""

"For the enthusiasm that can go so far as not to be discouraged at the sure prospect of trouble, but admires and emulates what is good even so, could never be turned away from what is noble by anybody. Such men ever, whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and repress any ignoble passion."

"Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting."

"The great god Pan is dead."

"Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less."

"Thou gazest on the stars: Would I might be, O star of mine, the skies With myriad eyes To gaze on thee."