"Plutarch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrative. At school he was much engaged just now with the history of Rome, and it was his greatest delight to tell the listeners at home the glorious stories which were his latest acquisitions. All to-day he had been reading Plutarch. The enthusiasm with which he spoke of these old heroes and their deeds went beyond mere boyish admiration of valour and delight in bloodshed; he seemed to be strongly sensible of the real features of greatness in these men's lives, and invested ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... often cursed my existence; Plutarch taught me resignation. I shall, if possible, defy Fate, though there will be hours in my life when I shall be the most miserable of God's creatures. Resignation! What a wretched resort; yet it is the only one ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... penetrates through both, and communicates itself with the speed of an arrow.' [Lodestone was probably known in China before the Christian era.] Other electrical effects were also observed by the ancients. Classical writers, as Homer, Caesar, and Plutarch, speak of flames on the points of javelins and the tips of masts. They regarded them as manifestations of the Deity, as did the soldiers of the Mahdi lately in the Soudan. It is recorded of Servius Tullus, the sixth king of Rome, that his hair emitted sparks on ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... of the death of Cleopatra has been preferred which attributes her end to poison. According to Plutarch its actual manner is very uncertain, though popular rumour ascribed it to the bite of an asp. She seems, however, to have carried out her design under the advice of that shadowy personage, her physician, Olympus, and it is more than doubtful if he would ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... English near Lagny, adds: "And there the battle was hard and fierce, for the French were barely more than the English."[97] These simple folk, seeing that one man is as good as another, admitted the risk of fighting one to one. Their minds had not fed on Plutarch as had those of the Revolution and the Empire. And for their encouragement they had neither the carmagnoles of Barrere, nor the songs of Marie-Joseph Chenier, nor the bulletins of la grande armee. Why did these captains, these men-at-arms go and fight in one place rather ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... their ships had been carrying forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. Then commenced what may be called her University existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have entertained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated Greece: in this he failed, but his encouragement of such men as Phidias and Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sovereignty over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Of sad Electra's poet: Amongst Plutarch's vague stories, he says that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... pair of spectacles ('unum Brillum') on his nose, and a book before him curiously written, and I saw at once that it was neither in German nor Bohemian, nor yet in Latin. And I said to him, 'Respected Doctor, what do they call that book?' He answered, 'It is called the Greek Plutarch, and it treats of philosophy.' And I said, 'Read some of it, for it must contain wonderful things.' Then I saw a little book, newly printed, lying on the floor, and I said to him, 'Respected Doctor, what lies there?' He answered, 'It is a controversial book, which a friend ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare's life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true, Nor Shakespeare's books, unless his books ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Plutarch tells us of one Silurus that had eighty sons, whom he calls to him as he lay upon his death-bed, and gave them a sheaf of arrows; thereby to signify, that if they lived in unity they might do much; but, if they divided, they would come to nothing. If Christians were all of one piece—if they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he adds later in the same spirit, "my man Harry will always be a favourite; he tells me all the amusing news; he first told me of the late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's." It is not that Walpole was a republican of the school of Plutarch. He was merely a toy republican who enjoyed being insolent at the expense of kings, and behind their backs. He was scarcely capable of open rudeness in the fashion of Beau Brummell's "Who's your fat friend?" His ridicule was never a public display; it was a secret ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less necessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man's self, that he has spent his time and study ill, which ought to have been employed in the acquisition of more ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... be an error here made either by Dio or by some scribe in the course of the ages. For, according to many reliable authorities (Plutarch, Life of Brutus, chapter 21; Appian, Civil Wars, Book Three, chapter 23; Cicero, Philippics, II, 13, 31, and X, 3, 7; id., Letters to Atticus, Book Fifteen, letters 11 and 12), it was Brutus and not Cassius who was praetor urbanus and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... not appear to have retained any hold on the later language of Greece. Like several experiments in language of the writers of the Elizabethan age, they were afterwards lost; and though occasionally found in Plutarch and imitators of Plato, they have not been accepted by Aristotle or passed into ...
— Laws • Plato
... is no possible doubt that in Julius Caesar Shakespeare derived the great body of his historical material from The Life of Julius Caesar, The Life of Marcus Brutus, and The Life of Marcus Antonius in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch.[1] This work was first printed in 1579 in a massive folio dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. A second edition appeared in 1595, and in all probability this was the edition read by Shakespeare. The title-page is reproduced in facsimile ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his being taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the Jews, likewise languishing under Mr Wegg's generalship, Mr Boffin arrived in another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect him to believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr Boffin's chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided in his mind between ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... minute account of them has been preserved. In the lively pages of Livy, and in the more accurate narrative of Polybius, a considerable mass of information on this subject maybe found; while a clear light has been thrown on many parts of their latter history by the narrative of Appian, the Lives of Plutarch, and, above all, by the Commentaries of Caesar. But all this information, scattered over a multiplicity of authors, could give us no conception of their history as a people. An author was still wanting to collect all these together, so as to present us with something like a continuous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... resulting from Alexander's conquests, and by his policy of breaking down the barriers between Greek and barbarian, the idea was reflected in the Stoic doctrine that all men are brothers, and that a man's true country is not his own particular city, but the ecumene. [Footnote: Plutarch long ago saw the connection between the policy of Alexander and the cosmopolitan teaching of Zeno. De Alexandri Magni virtute, i. Sec. 6.] It soon became familiar, popularised by the most popular of the later philosophies of Greece; and just as it had been implied in the imperial aspiration and ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... "Plutarch would have put William Booth and John Wesley together in his 'Parallel Lives.' Each man 'thought in continents.' 'The world is my parish,' said Wesley, and Methodism to-day covers the world. So General Booth believed in world conquest for Christ, because he believed in Christ's all-conquering ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... computation, and there are less weary moments in which the inexhaustible supply of situations still suggests fresh possibilities of laughter. Granted that the ever fertile mother-in-law jest and the one about the talkative barber were venerable in the days of Plutarch; there are others more securely and more deservedly rooted in public esteem which are, by comparison, new. Christianity, for example, must be held responsible for the missionary and cannibal joke, of which we have grown weary unto death; ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a system, it follows that rebellion is the worst of crimes. Hobbes calls it a war renewed—a renouncing of the Covenant. He was so terrified of it that he dwelt upon the danger of reading Greek and Roman history (probably having Plutarch and his praise of rebels most in mind)—"which venom," he says, "I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad dog." In all leaders of rebellion he found only three conditions—to be discontented with their own lot, to be eloquent speakers, and to be men of mean judgment and ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... is a Grecian one, The author's name I cannot tell; Perhaps it was old Xenophon Or Aristotle, I can't dwell On trifles; perhaps Plutarch wrote the story: At any rate its years have made ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Plutarch assures us, That wine collects and increases the powers of the mind. He observes also, That it produces excellent effects on the minds of persons, who, though naturally timid, want no penetration. Plato maintains, as I have observed in the foregoing chapter, That wine ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... nearly through college, a periodical called "The Harvard Register" was published by students and recent graduates. Three articles were contributed by him to this periodical. Two of them have the titles "Conversation," "Friendship." His quotations are from Horace and Juvenal, Plato, Plutarch, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Shakespeare, and Scott. There are passages in these Essays which remind one strongly of his brother, the Lecturer of twenty-five or thirty years later. Take this as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 'Germany' and several other books of his 'Annals,' a great part of Horace, some of Ovid, and some of Caesar's 'Commentaries,' in writing, besides a number of Tully's orations. ... In Greek his progress has not been equal, yet he has studied morsels in Aristotle's 'Poetics,' in Plutarch's 'Lives,' and Lucian's 'Dialogues,' 'The Choice of Hercules,' in Xenophon, and lately he has gone through several books ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... "Plutarch informs us," says Rollin (Ancient History, vol. i. p. 65.), "that the god did not compose the verses of the oracle. He inflamed the Pythia's imagination, and kindled in her soul that living light which ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... Francisco Pizarro, and the President Don Diego de Almagro; it seems proper to attempt giving their portraitures, with some account of their manners and qualifications, imitating in this the example of Plutarch; who, after giving the lives and heroic actions of two great commanders, institutes a comparison between them, shewing how far they resembled and differed from each other. We have already said all that could be learnt respecting their parentage. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Plutarch, who drew material for his life of Artaxerxes not only from Ctesias, but also from authorities now lost to us, leaves us with much the same impression of the lords of the East at the close of the ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... consisted chiefly of books on polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolved that I should not be a clergyman. 'Plutarch's Lives' there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an 'Essay on Projects,' and another of Dr. Mather's, called 'Essays to do Good,' which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... gentleman do when his lackey starts to quote Plutarch?" with mock helplessness. "Well, lad, read Plutarch and profit. But keep your grimy hands off my Rabelais, or I'll ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of Plutarch was among the biographies that showed usage, and the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. Two Years Before the Mast he loved, and never tired of. The more recent Memoirs of Andrew D. White and Moncure D. Conway both, I remember, gave him enjoyment, as did the Letters of Lowell. A ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... disposed to call this a discovery of Dr. Franklin's, (from his paper inserted in the Philosophical Transactions) but in this they are much mistaken. Pliny, Plutarch, and other naturalists were acquainted with it."—"Ea natura est olei, ut lucem afferat, ac tranquillar omnia, etiam mare, quo non aliud elementum implacabilius." Memoirs of ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... the pronouncements may be fortuitous. Their relative priority uncertain chronology obscures. The date that orthodoxy has assigned to Moses is about 1500 B.C. Plutarch said that Zarathrustra lived five thousand years before the fall of Troy. Both dates are perhaps questionable. But a possible hypothesis philology provides. The term Jehovah is a seventeenth-century expansion of the Hebrew Jhvh, now usually written Jahveh and commonly translated: He who causes ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... been supposed by many that the light of the moon promotes putrefaction. Pliny and Plutarch both affirm this to be true. Dew, by supplying moisture in the warm season, aids this process of decay. We have seen that dew is most abundant in clear nights; and although all clear nights are not moonlight nights, yet all moonlight nights ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... caused in his mind a painful feeling, which estranged him from his schoolfellows. I, however, was almost his constant companion. During play-hours he used to withdraw to the library, where he-read with deep interest works of history, particularly Polybius and Plutarch. He was also fond of Arrianus, but did not care much for Quintus Gurtius. I often went off to play with my comrades, and left him ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... his assertion: for so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours. Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the Revelation, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Shakspere's "small Latin" (as Jonson called it) enabled him to read in the works of the Roman clerks; to read sufficient for his uses. As a fact, he made use of English translations, and also of Latin texts. Scholars like Bacon do not use bad translations of easy Latin authors. If Bacon wanted Plutarch, he went to Plutarch in Greek, not to an English translation of a French translation of a ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... book to ask for. One of his friends bought for him a little volume containing a translation from the Greek philosopher Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about life and duty. Then he bought other ancient authors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he heard the Methodist preachers diligently on Sundays, and read his Greek philosophy in the evenings. He tells us that the account of Epicurus living in his garden upon a halfpenny a day, and considering a little cheese ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... weak in the ancient classics, but the following are some of the authors represented: Aristotle, Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Diogenes Laertius, Euclid, Eutropius, Juvenal, Livy, Lucan, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca, Suetonius, and Tacitus. In English belles-lettres the chief works are Chaucer's Works (London, 1721), Abraham Cowley's Works (1668), Michael Drayton's "Poly-Olbion" (1613), Gower's "Confessio Amantis" (London, 1554), and George ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... Plutarch, in his life of Numa, describes the reflectors used by the Romans for kindling the sacred fire, as concave instruments of brass, though not spherical like the Peruvian, but ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... I see; don't you want another? Nellie will show you the library, and on the lower book-shelf, on the right-hand side of the door, you will find a large volume in leather binding—'Plutarch.' Take it with you, and read it carefully. Good-bye. I shall come down to the Row to-morrow or ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... them; but there is somehow the same charm. Pepys's Diary, by Wheatley. Percy's Reliques. Phillips's English Dictionary. Photii Bibliotheca. Plato's Dialogues. Perhaps the French version by Cousin is preferable. Plinii Epistolae. Plutarch's Lives. Popular (Early) Poetry of England, 4 vols. Popular (Early) Poetry of Scotland and the Border, 2 vols. Poets. Select British Poets, 1824. Includes ample selections from writers hardly worth possessing in a separate shape, including many ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... able to assign a reason. Carmelli tells us that it still prevailed in Italy in 1750.[2] It was evidently of long standing in Ovid's time as it had passed then into a proverb among the people; nearly two centuries afterwards Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 86.) puts the question: [Greek: Dia ti toi Maiou menos ouk agontai gunaikas], which he makes a vain endeavour to answer satisfactorily. He assigns three reasons: first, because May being between April and June, and April being consecrated to Venus, and June to Juno, those deities ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... divine and poet, horn at Kirkby Stephen; was a prebend of Wells Cathedral; wrote a poem entitled "Genius and Virtue," and executed with a brother a translation of Plutarch's Lives (1735-1779). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... down, to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to see heads as brittle as glasses, and often broken; men come hither to quarrel, and come hither to be made friends: and if Plutarch will lend me his simile, it is even Telephus's sword that makes wounds and cures them. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or maker-away of a rainy day. It is the torrid zone that scorches the[25] face, and tobacco ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a young bull, whose hair is black, on his forehead a white triangle, — on his back an eagle, with a beetle under his tongue and with the hair of his tail double." Ovid says he is of various colors. Plutarch says he has a crescent on his right side. These superstitions varied from age to age. Apis was ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Plutarch, whose time reaches to the Emperor Hadrian, has exercised an influence, through certain peculiarities of his style, which has extended even to us. As a philosopher he is to be classed among the Platonists, yet with a predominance ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... fellow, who is he? Harry Dart? He looks equal to the heroism of all Plutarch's heroes: he has a beautiful, consecrated face. I hope he will live up to what it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Editors (following Plutarch) read {mounon Spartieteon}, "lay up for the Spartans glory above ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... mixed with colors. When painting was practised in watercolors, glue was used with the white of an egg or with gums; but wax and resins were also worked with water, with certain preparations. This latter mode was called encaustic, and was, according to Plutarch, the most durable of all methods. It was not generally adopted till the time of Alexander the Great. Wax was a most essential ingredient, since it prevented the colors from cracking. Encaustic painting was practised both with the cestrum and the pencil, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... student, possessing his share of the vivacity and excitability of the south, would stamp, spring from his seat, shout and applaud, calling out in Greek "splendid!" "inimitable!" "capital!" "prettily said!" and so forth. Plutarch writes a little essay on the proper manner of behaving in the lecture-rooms, and he tells us: "You should sit in a proper manner and not lounge; you should keep your eyes on the speaker and show a lively interest; maintain a composed countenance ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Lucullus, whose incredible opulence exhausted itself on more than imperial luxuries, more honourably distinguished himself by his vast collections of books, and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he allowed the learned. "It was a library," says Plutarch, "whose walks, galleries, and cabinets, were open to all visitors; and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses to hold literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." This library enlarged by others, Julius Caesar once proposed to open for the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Plutarch, and one or two more Of the best wits that lived in the age before; With a dish of roast mutton, not venison or teal, And clean, though coarse, linen at every meal. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... planet which revolved round the sun, beyond the orbit of Saturn;—who reckoned the planets to be sixteen in number;—and who reckoned the length of the tropical year within three minutes of the true time; nor, indeed, were they wrong at all, if a tradition mentioned by Plutarch be correct."(64) ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... familiar in name, at least, as household words. Even in the extremely diluted form of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their value is most highly praised by the most eminent men of Greece, as Pindar, Sophocles, Isocrates, Plutarch, and Plato. Especially were they regarded as useful with regard to post-mortem existence, as the Initiated learned that which ensured his future happiness. Sopater further alleged that Initiation ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... prince, in the year before the Revolution, he wrote a Tragedy called the Spartan Dame, which however was not acted till the year 1721. The subject is taken from the Life of Agis in Plutarch, where the character of Chelonis, between the duties of a wife and daughter was thought to have a near resemblance to that of King William's Queen Mary. 'I began this play, says Mr. Southern, a year before the Revolution, and near four acts written without ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... [Footnote C: Plutarch, who gives an account of these occurrences, varies the orthography of the name. We, however, retain the ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Lyttelton of Frankley three years after Fielding's death. He died in 1773. In 1760-5 he published his Dialogues of the Dead, profanely characterised by Mr. Walpole as "Dead Dialogues." No. 28 of these is a colloquy between "Plutarch, Charon, and a Modern Bookseller," and it contains the following reference to Fielding:—"We have [says Mr. Bookseller] another writer of these imaginary histories, one who has not long since descended to these regions. His name is ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... is of her life and government. For as Statuaes and Pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking Pictures. Wherein if my affection be not too great, or my reading too small, I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives by parallels, it would trouble him for virtue and fortune both to find for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more impression ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... is an amalgam of two fragments. The first sentence is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, ix. 1: the second by Plutarch, de ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Alcibiades, Plutarch mentions this defect in his speech; or it may have been a 'fine ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... note that the questions as to the strongest, most beautiful, and richest occur in Plutarch's Symposium, 152 a, and it is a striking coincidence that, in the same treatise, 151 b, occurs another practical riddle, how to drink up the ocean, which occurs in several variants of the Clever Lass. But there is no evidence of any story connection between the two ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... in Jonson's Epicoene is also interesting, though in the play itself it is not made to refer to Montaigne but apparently to Plutarch and Seneca: 'Grave asses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that's all. A man could talk so his whole age. I do utter as good things every hour if they were collected and observed, as either of them.' May not such words have fallen from ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... of effeminacy and want of courage in battle seems to be considered as better founded. Plutarch admits it fully. His foppery is matter of ridicule to AEschines, who, at the same time, in rather a remarkable passage in his speech on the Crown, gives us some clue to the popular report as to his deficiency in the military virtues of antiquity. "Who," says he "will be there ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... persistently teach this view. For what says Lord Bacon? (Essays, XVII. Of Superstition.) "It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose. 'Surely,' saith he, 'I had rather a great deal men should say there were no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say there was one Plutarch that would eat his children ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... imagination was kindled from other sources. Boys of pronounced character have always owed far more to their private reading than to their set studies; and the young Buonaparte, while grudgingly learning Latin and French grammar, was feeding his mind on Plutarch's "Lives"—in a French translation. The artful intermingling of the actual and the romantic, the historic and the personal, in those vivid sketches of ancient worthies and heroes, has endeared them to many minds. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... or spontaneous agency generally. Chrysippus said that every movement was determined by antecedent motives; that, in cases of equal conflict, the exact equality did not long continue, because some new but slight motive slipped in unperceived and turned the scale on one side or the other. (See Plutarch De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, c. 23, p. 1045.) Here, we see, the question now known as the Freedom of the Will is discussed: and Chrysippus declares against it, affirming that volition is always ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... is of the kind that will last forever; yet it was rather the effect than the motive of his conduct. Some future Plutarch will search for a parallel to his character. Epaminondas is perhaps the brightest name of all antiquity. Our Washington resembled him in his purity and the ardor of his patriotism; and like him, he first exalted the glory ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was in truth a combination of heroes—for he was of a sturdy, raw-boned make like Ajax Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that Hercules would have given his hide for (meaning his lion's hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load. He was, moreover, as Plutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force of his arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as tho it came out of a barrel; and, like the self-same warrior, he possest a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect, which was enough of itself to make the very bowels ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... at all times, and in all places, paint or draw, yet the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at all times, and in all places. Both Livy and Plutarch, in describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity, have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some all their lives vainly expect from Nature. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... [952]Suidas from some anonymous author places him five hundred years before the war of Troy. Hermodorus Platonicus went much farther, and made him five thousand years before that [953]aera. Hermippus, who professedly wrote of his doctrines, supposed him to have been of the same [954]antiquity. Plutarch also [955]concurs, and allows him five thousand years before that war. Eudoxus, who was a consummate philosopher, and a great traveller, supposed him to have flourished six thousand years before the death ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... overwhelming that it is difficult to see how even the idlest lady of Elizabeth's court found time or patience to wade through them. They consist first of anecdotes and allusions relating to historical or mythological persons of the ancient world; some being drawn from Plutarch, Pliny, Ovid, Virgil, and other sources, but many springing simply from Lyly's exuberant fancy. In the second place Euphues is a collection of similes borrowed from "a fantastical natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones, to which the most extraordinary virtues ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Plutarch somewhere says that he finds no such great difference between beast and beast as between man and man. He speaks of the mind and internal qualities. I could find in my heart to say there is more difference between one man and another than between ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... should note that my father, though the most humane of men, was intensely fond of stories of war, and in a layman's way understood a good deal about strategy. For example, he knew not only, like Sir Thomas Browne, all the battles in Plutarch, but also all the big Indian battles and those of the Peninsula. He was a special student of Waterloo, for he had talked with plenty of men and officers who had been in the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the exclusion of the rest. 'The Dog of Montargis' is in like manner mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It first occurs in France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of Charlemagne; but it is at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch, who relates it as an anecdote of brute sagacity ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... little Spinoza and Plutarch, I have read nothing since my return, as I am quite occupied by my present work. It is a task that will take me up to the end of July. I am in a hurry to be through with it, so as to abandon myself to the extravagances ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... advertised as 'missing:'—Langhorn's Plutarch, 1st vol., Thomson's Works, 4th vol., Gordon's 'Universal Accountant,' 1st vol.; and Gray's Hudibras, 2nd vol. For each one of them there is offered a reward of two dollars! Reading was expensive recreation in ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... various kinds of narrative writing, that which is read with the greatest eagerness, and may with the greatest facility and effect be applied to the purposes of life is biography; and the accomplished and sagacious Montaigne, speaking in raptures, upon the same subject, says "Plutarch is the writer after my own heart, and Suetonius is another, the like of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... scheme of laying out a city somewhere. In many cases the city was plotted, the sites of the principal buildings, including a courthouse and a university, were determined, and a sonorous name was selected out of Plutarch, before its location was even considered. For this latter office the intervention of an official surveyor was necessary, and therefore Mr. Calhoun had more business than he could attend to without assistance. Looking about for a young man of good character, intelligent ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... in a word, to prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. So history should be written, and so they wrote it. First and last, whatever form they chose, they remained historians. Alleging the example set by Plutarch and Saint-Simon, they make their histories of the eighteenth century a mine of anecdote, a pageant of picturesque situations. State-papers, blue-books, ministerial despatches, are in their view the conventional means used for hoodwinking simpletons and forwarding the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Geometry the keystone of all Knowledge, because, among all other channels of thought, it alone was the exponent of absolute and undeniable truth. He tells us that "Geometry rightly treated is the Knowledge of the Eternal"; and Plutarch gives us yet another instance of Plato's teaching concerning this subject, in which he looks upon God as the Great Architect, when he says, "Plato says that God is always geometrising." Holding, therefore, as Plato did, that God was a great Geometer, and ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... extraordinary person was the daughter of M. d'Armont, and she passed into the immortality of history as Charlotte Corday. She was twenty-four. Her father was a royalist, but she had read Raynal, and had the classical enthusiasm which was bred by Plutarch in those as well as in other days. She had refused the health of Lewis XVI., because, she said, he was a good man, but a bad king. She preferred to live with a kinswoman, away from her own family, and her mind was made up never ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Chelmsford, and ed. at Camb., was master of the free school at Coventry, where he also practised medicine. His chief translations, made in good Elizabethan English, are of Pliny's Natural History, Plutarch's Morals, Suetonius, Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and Camden's Britannia. There are passages in the second of these which have hardly been excelled by any later prose translator of the classics. His later years were ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... homes of these men and women have not been equaled since Plutarch wrote his forty-six parallel lives of the Greeks and Romans. And these were given to the world before the first rosy dawn of modern civilization had risen to the horizon. Without dwelling upon their achievements, Plutarch, with a trifling incident, a simple word or an innocent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... well known passage,[57] speaks of Tibur and Praeneste as two of the most famous and best fortified of the towns of Latium, and tells why Praeneste is the more impregnable, but we have no mention of its gates in literature, except incidentally in Plutarch,[58] who says that when Marius was flying before Sulla's forces and had reached Praeneste, he found the gates closed, and had to be drawn up the wall by a rope. The most ancient reference we have to a definite gate is ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... plays fall into the groups of history, tragedy, and comedy, so his chief sources are three in number: biography, as found in the Chronicle of Holinshed and Plutarch's Lives; romance, as found in the novels of the period, which were most of them translations from Italian novelle; and dramatic material from ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... in forming a decision is worse than useless. A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency. Plutarch tells of a king of Macedon who, in the midst of an action, withdrew into the adjoining town under pretence of sacrificing to Hercules; whilst his opponent Emilius, at the same time that he implored the Divine aid, sought for victory sword in hand, and won the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... you might have given me some nautical details, which, in spite of Plutarch's fine narration, have ever ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority of Plutarch, Agis, 11. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to our readers than the precise contents of the said tankard. In olden times the "cool tankard" was, or nearly coincided with, the wine mixed with Burrage, (so the translators call the herb) of Plutarch, and the Herbosum Vinum of Du Cange. In all probability, the "cool tankard" of our times implies a well-appointed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... of Themistocles,' Plutarch informs his readers that sneezing by the General on the eve of a battle was regarded as a certain sign of conquest. Strangely enough we find that in comparatively modern times, the custom of giving expression to good ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the style, the most judicious in the choice of topics, the most orderly in the arrangement, and the most rich in the coloring, without employing the smallest degree of exaggeration, of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared. An ancient writer (Plutarch, I think it is) quotes some verses on the eloquence of Pericles, who is called "the only orator that left stings in the minds of his hearers." Like his, the eloquence of the Declaration, not contradicting, but ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... never read Plutarch's Lives (or even if you have), you will read them with much pleasure. They are in the City Library, and probably in many private ones. Beloe's Herodotus will amuse you. Bartow has it. You had better read the text without the notes; they are diffuse, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of which we have one or two specimens, in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they were scurrilous and slanderous to the last degree; a proof that even Caesar could feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr Mommsen throws himself heartily into Caesar's antipathy, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... advice to sell the worn out oxen and the sick slaves justly excited Plutarch's generous scorn, and has been made the text of a sweeping denunciation by Mommsen of the practice of husbandry by men of affairs in Cato's time. "The whole system," says Mommsen, "was pervaded by the utterly unscrupulous spirit ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual. In the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch's "Lives", and the works of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny's "Letters", the "Annals" and "Germany" of Tacitus. In French, the "History of the French Revolution" by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to such generals as had averted a threatened war, or gained some great advantage without inflicting great loss on the enemy. The triumph was allowed only to those who had gained some signal victory, which decided the fate of a protracted war. The following description, extracted from Plutarch, of the great triumph granted to Paulus AEmilius, for his glorious termination of the Macedonian war, will give the reader an adequate idea of the splendour displayed by the Romans on these ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... effects of fear upon the mother's mind are illustrated by Plutarch, who, in his Life of Publicola, mentions that, 'at a time when a superstitious fear overran the city of Rome, all the women then pregnant brought forth imperfect children, and were prematurely delivered.' But we have already spoken, in treating of mothers' marks, of the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... too, what was at that time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetoric. He must have made, therefore, by each course of lectures, a thousand minae, or 3335:6:8. A thousand minae, accordingly, is said by Plutarch, in another place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. Many other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes. Georgias made a present to the temple ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... was more tolerable than this; for there is a sense in which a man's 'valour' is his value, is the measure of his worth; seeing that no virtue can exist among men who have not learned, in Milton's glorious phrase,' to hate the cowardice of doing wrong.' [Footnote: It did not escape Plutarch, imperfect Latin scholar as he was, that 'virtus' far more nearly corresponded to [Greek: andreia] than to [Greek: arete] (Coriol. I)] It could not but be morally ill with a people among whom 'morbidezza' was used as an epithet of praise, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... komes tinos].] This is generally supposed to have been Cunaxa, where, according to Plutarch, the battle was fought. Ainsworth, p. 244, identifies Cunaxa with Imsey'ab, a place 36 miles ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... of idolatry, or the pagans never were so. You may see in Lucian (in his vindication of his images), that they did not take their statues to be real gods, but only the representations of them. The same doctrine may be found in Plutarch; and it is all the modern priests have to say in excuse for their worshipping wood and stone, though they cannot deny, at the same time, that the vulgar are ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... desperate groping for his inspiration, Jim thought instantly of all his favorites—Diogenes, Plutarch, Endymion, Socrates, ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... nature and having the same powers. The testimony of Algazeli is to the same effect; and he adds, that these fascinators have a peculiar power over women. We have also the testimony of Aristotle, Pliny, and Plutarch, who all speak as believers, while Solinus enumerates certain families of fascinators who exerted their influence voce et lingu, and Philostratus makes special mention of Apolloius Thyaneus as having been possessed of these wonderful powers. Indeed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... sight to my eyes to see a bookcase with second-hand books in it, for these are almost always bought to be read. In a teacher's house near Elgin, I recently saw a most remarkable collection—a veritable ragged regiment of books: single volumes of Plutarch, unexpurgated plays by Farquhar and Mrs. Behn, Civil War pamphlets, and rows of oddities. Mr. Forbes (the owner) was at one period of his life assistant in Falkirk, and every Saturday morning, rain or ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Monument Association, the other day, pondering over the possible fate of the Dutch colony of the Mannahattoes, supposing that the Mayflower had made (as was purposed) the Highlands of Neversink instead of Shankpainter Hill at the end of Cape Cod. It was a perilous meditation, for we found our belief in Plutarch's Lives, the Charter Oak, and the existence of the Maelstroem all sliding away from under us. "Think," we said, "if New York had been Boston, how it would have fared with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Plutarch tells us that Flora, the mistress of Cn. Pompey, used to say in commendation of her lover, that she could never quit his arms ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that this was far from being the case; for, says Plutarch, the bird had been all the time occupied in profound meditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; and when at last master of it, the magpie, to the astonishment of all its friends, suddenly broke its long silence by a perfect imitation of the flourish ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Luc, and, in spite of it, had parted from his friends at the Hotel Montmorency. It was one of those bravadoes delighted in by the valiant colonel, who said of himself, "I am but a simple gentleman, but I bear in my breast the heart of all emperor; and when I read in Plutarch the exploits of the ancient Romans, I think there is not one that I could not imitate." And besides, he thought that St. Luc, who was not ordinarily one of his friends, merely wished to get him laughed at for his precautions; and Bussy feared ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... am even with you, for your otium cum dignitate and festina lente, and three or four other more of your new Latin sentences: if I should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca and Plutarch upon this subject, I should overwhelm you, but I leave those as triarii for your next charges. I shall only give you now a light skirmish out of an epigrammatist, your special good friend, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's "diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings between the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Air; rode under glass cover, on the finest day; made the very Empress shut her windows when he came to audience; fed, cautiously daring, on boiled capons: more I remember not,—except also that he would suffer no mention of the word Death by any mortal. [Hormayr,—OEsterreichischer Plutarch,—iv. (3tes), 231-283.] A most high-sniffing, fantastic, slightly insolent shadow-king;—ruled, in his time, the now vanished Olympus; and had the difficult glory (defective only in result) of uniting France and Austria ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual, Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarrassment to the men of Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did not wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (Sympos, I. qu. 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a figure, which either as to face or form could claim ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... pertinent to any practical inquiry of our time to predict what triumphs in art, literature, or government they are to accomplish, or what romance is to glow upon their history. No Iliad may be written of them and their woes. No Plutarch may gather the lives of their heroes. No Vandyck may delight to warm his canvas with their forms. How many or how few astronomers like Banneker, chieftains like Toussaint, orators like Douglass they may have, it is not worth while to conjecture. It is better to dismiss ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... truth of this assertion is to be found in several passages of the fragmentary works of Philolaus (Stob., 'Eclog.', p. 360 and 460, Heeren), p. 62, 90, in Bockh's German edition. I do not, according to the example of Nake, cite Timof Locris, since his authenticity is doubtful. Plutarch ('De plac. Phil.', ii., I) says, in the most express manner, that Pythatoras gave the name of Cosmos to the universe on account of the order which reigned throughout it; so likewise does Galen ('Hist. Phil.', p. 429). This word, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt |
