Herodotus Quotes
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Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.
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The Colchians, Ethiopians and Egyptians have thick lips, broad nose, woolly hair and they are burnt of skin.
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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.
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It Egypt has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any otherplace.
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When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
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The Persians are very fond of wine ... It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then in the morning, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberations, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.
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Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.
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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.
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The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.
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The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.
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Good masters generally have bad slaves, and bad slaves have good masters.
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My men have become women, but the women men.
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Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.
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Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.
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It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
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But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.
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Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.
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It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs.
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As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.
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The most hateful grief of all human griefs is to have knowledge of a truth, but no power over the event.
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The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
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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.
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This king Sesostris divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas.
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Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.