Herodotus Quotes
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The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability.
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When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
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The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.
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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 Colchians, Ethiopians and Egyptians have thick lips, broad nose, woolly hair and they are burnt of skin.
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The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.
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The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.
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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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Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.
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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 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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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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Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.
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Good masters generally have bad slaves, and bad slaves have good masters.
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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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Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.
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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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Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.
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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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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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Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.