Herodotus Quotes
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Force has no place where there is need of skill.
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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.
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If you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul.
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All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
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Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.
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Far better it is to have a stout heart always and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen.
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How can a monarchy be a suitable thing, which allows a man to do as he pleases with none to hold him to account. And even if you were to take the best man on earth, and put him into a monarchy, you put outside him the thoughts that usually guide him.
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Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.
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The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.
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The period of a Persian boy's education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.
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Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.
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Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
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Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.
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Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to shoot: unbrace them when the shooting is over. Were they kept always strung they would break and fail the archer in time of need. So it is with men. If they give themselves constantly to serious work, and never indulge awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses and become mad.
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It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.
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We have two useless gods who never leave our island, but like to dwell in it constantly, Poverty and Helplessness.
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A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.
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The hastening of any undertaking begets error, from which great losses are wont to come.
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For if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best.
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To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.
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One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.
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The sun will not shine on any country that has borders with ours.
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It is better to be envied than pitied.
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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.