Herodotus Quotes
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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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In peace children inter their parents, war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
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The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.
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Before a man dies, hold back and call him not happy but lucky.
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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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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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Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.
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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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Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.
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The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.
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Good masters generally have bad slaves, and bad slaves have good masters.
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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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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.
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The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
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A general curiosity about the unknown sparked by the multicultural milieu in which I spent my formative years. There was a lot of unknown back then, too. I dare say it was easier to be an explorer then.
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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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My men have become women, but the women men.
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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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Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.
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As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.
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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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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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Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.