Plutarch Quotes

Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life.

Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies

Obsequiousness begets friends, truth hatred.

The same man cannot be both Friend and Flatterer.

An honest answer is the sign of true friendship.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends.

One man in a thousand, Solomon says. Will stick more close than a brother. And it's worth while seeking him half your days If you find him before the other. ---The Thousandth Man

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

A real friend ... exults in his friend’s happiness, rejoices in all his joys, and is ready to afford him the best advice.

Never permit yourself to indulge in cheap flattery, which often times means to merely satisfy the individuals vanity and sometimes to ingratiate the flatter into the good graces of the flattered.

Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.

A true friend never asks you to feed their imaginary fish. Or fertilize their imaginary crops.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.

A FRIEND IS A PERSON . . . With whom you can be sincere. . . . To whom you never need to defend yourself. . . . On whom you can depend whether present or absent. . . . With whom you never need pretend. . . . To whom you can reveal yourself without fear of betrayal. . . . Who does not feel she owns you because you are her friend. . . . Who will not selfishly use you because she has your confidence. I WOULD HAVE SUCH A FRIEND. . . AND I WOULD BE SUCH A FRIEND. I DO HAVE SUCH A FRIEND!

But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

So, I think that's the centerpiece of morality: Don't lie. But to do that, you have to go a step further and find out what the truth is.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.

Money corrupts the process of reasoning.

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend.