Plutarch Quotes

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.

Are we savages or what?

When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.

Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.

Civilization is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

If people were not wicked I should not mind their being stupid; but, to our misfortune, they are both.

Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now.

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.

Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

There is a sense of decency that's like a barometer to a man's or a country's health.

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.