Plutarch

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

The stomach is not to be loaded, for there is nothing so hostile to thought as a full belly.

An immoderate diet is unhealthy, but a temperate one preserves strength.

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, set forth tables of dead, stale bodies, and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.

Abstinence is the nurse of the soul.

We call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but in ourselves we surpass them in savagery, for they kill for food, while we kill for luxury.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,—thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.