18 h 4 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Can you tell an honest friend from someone who only tells you what you want to hear?
In Plutarch's Morals, everyday choices become questions worth pausing over. How do you master anger, listen well, or judge praise? Plutarch gathers essays, letters and conversations around the work of shaping character. He writes as a patient teacher for friends, pupils and fellow citizens who want practical help, not a closed system of thought.
The collection moves from How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend to On Controlling Anger, where Sulla and Fundanus discuss learning to govern your temper. How a Young Man Should Hear Poetry explores reading and education. Table-Talk brings you to dinner conversations full of curious questions, while other pieces consider marriage, grief, health and superstition.
What you’ll discover
- Friendship beyond easy praise Learn why flattery can look like friendship, and why honesty offers a better test.
- A calmer response to anger Follow Fundanus as he explains how he learns to master his own temper.
- Reading with a questioning mind Explore how poetry, reading and listening can help shape a young person's character.
- Questions around the dinner table Join guests who turn food, health and everyday puzzles into lively subjects for discussion.
- Good habits before grand theory Find practical advice alongside stories from Greek and Roman history, guided by a humane curiosity.
Who will love it
You will enjoy it if you like wise, practical advice, stories about famous Greeks and Romans, and clear thinking on family, friendship, temper and the calm mind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Good character needs nature, teaching, and practice
- Parents teach most by the example they set
- Lasting marriage rests on shared life and kindness
- Grief deserves honor but not excess
- Virtue is reason guiding passion, not destroying it
- A flatterer copies you, while a friend tells the truth
- Enemies can teach you more than friends do
- Guard your tongue and your curiosity
- Anger, envy, and worry give way to steady habits
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- Hardcover
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Read and hear Moralia de Plutarco in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Moralia de Plutarco
by Plutarco
Plutarch tells a grieving wife to keep her mind on the happy two years of their daughter's life.
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In short
How do you raise a child, keep a marriage warm, mourn a loss, or answer an enemy? Plutarch, a Greek writer who lived around the first century, wrote essays on exactly these everyday questions.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Good character needs nature, teaching, and practice
In his essay on education, Plutarch says moral excellence grows from three things together: natural ability, instruction, and practice. Without teaching, talent is blind. Without talent, teaching falls short. Without either, practice stays incomplete.
He gives pictures from the farm and the workshop. Water dripping on rock wears it away, and neglected rich soil turns barren. The Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus raises two puppies from the same parents in different ways. When he sets a hare and a dish before them, one chases the hare and the other goes for the food. The Spartans do not understand until Lycurgus explains how differently the puppies were raised.
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What is Plutarch's Morals about?
It is a collection of Plutarch's ethical essays on education, marriage, love, grief, friendship, anger, flattery, and peace of mind. Each essay gives practical advice backed by stories of famous Greeks and Romans.
What is the difference between the Morals and the Lives?
The Lives are biographies of statesmen and generals. The Morals, also called the Moralia, are essays on a wide range of subjects. This volume gathers the ones most concerned with ethics and the life of the household.
Does Plutarch think virtue can be taught?
Yes. He argues that natural gifts, good teaching, and steady practice together shape character. Even a person with weak natural ability can improve through instruction and habit, and a gifted one can lose ground through laziness.
The author
Plutarch
40–120 · Greek biographer and philosopher
Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and historian who lived from about AD 40 to about AD 120. He was born in Chaeronea, in Greece, and lived there for much of his life. He wrote Parallel Lives and essays collected as Moralia. He also served as a priest at Delphi.
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