Herodotus Quotes - Page 5

Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.

Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed.

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.

If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own

Mens fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

It is the greatest and the tallest of trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves.

For as the body grows old, so the wits grow old and become blind towards all things alike.

In peace children inter their parents, war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

Soft men tend to be born from soft countries.

For of those [cities] that were great in earlier times, most of them have now become small, while those which were great in my time were small formerly.

Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.

Egypt is the gift of the Nile.

The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.