Plutarch on Humor
Browse 9 quotations attributed to Plutarch, catalogued under humor, with dates where available.
This page displays 9 quotations attributed to Plutarch and filed under "humor" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Plutarch, entry #86067: "When some one said to Pelopidas that the tyrant was coming on with a great force, he answered. "So much the better, for we shall conquer more."
Attributed to Plutarch, entry #123329: "Lysander said, "Where the lion's skin will not reach, it must be pieced with the fox's."
9 Quotes by Plutarch on Humor
"When some one said to Pelopidas that the tyrant was coming on with a great force, he answered. "So much the better, for we shall conquer more."
"Lysander said, "Where the lion's skin will not reach, it must be pieced with the fox's."
"Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less."
"To an old man who was acting wrongly he said, "My good sir, old age is ugly enough without your adding the deformity of wickedness to it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare."
"You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps and juices of deadly wounds."