This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Least of all is it becoming to reply to admonition with admonition, and to counter frank
speaking with frank speaking. For this provokes
instant heat, and causes estrangement, and such
altercation, as a rule, bewrays, not the man that
merely rewards frankness with frankness, but the
man that cannot tolerate frankness. It is better,
therefore, to bear patiently with a friend who affects
to offer admonition ; for if later he errs himself, and
requires admonition, this very fact, in a certain way,
gives our frank speaking a chance to speak frankly.
For if he be gently reminded, without any show of
resentment, that he himself has not been wont to
overlook the errors of his friends, but to take his
friends to task and enlighten them, he will be much
more inclined to yield and accept the correction, as
being a way to requite a kindly and gracious feeling,
and not fault-finding or anger.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1927. 1.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com