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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  8883 Plutarh AD 46?-AD 120 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

8883 Plutarh AD 46?-AD 120 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:8883
AUTHOR:Plutarch (A.D. 46?–A.D. c. 120)
QUOTATION:There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man’s life: “Know thyself,” 1 and “Nothing too much;” and upon these all other precepts depend.
ATTRIBUTION:Consolation to Apollonius.
 
Note 1.
See Pope, Quotation 22.

Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato. It is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and Socrates; also to Phemonë, a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period. Juvenal (Satire xi. 27) says that this precept descended from heaven. [back]