Herodotus Quotes - Page 2

Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.

Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are preparing to use it; when they do not require it, they allow it to remain unbent, for otherwise it would remain unserviceable when the time for using it arrived. So it is with man. If he were to devote himself unceasingly to a dull round of business, without breaking the monotony by cheerful amusements, he would fall imperceptibly into idiocy, or be struck by paralysis

If you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul.

All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.

If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.

As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.

To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

Call no man happy before he dies.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.

The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.

There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

Love of honor is a very shady sort of possession.

The sun will not shine on any country that has borders with ours.

It is a law of nature that fainthearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.

A real friend ... exults in his friend’s happiness, rejoices in all his joys, and is ready to afford him the best advice.

If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.

We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.

Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.

Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.

The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.

The trials of living and the pangs of disease make even the short span of life too long.

As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning. It's impossible for someone who is human to have all good things together, just as there is no single country able to provide all good things for itself.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.