Top 100 Herodotus Quotes
#1. The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.
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#2. My men have become women, but the women men.
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#3. 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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#4. Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.
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#5. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay.
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#6. The sun will not shine on any country that has borders with ours.
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#7. Now stop your dancing; you wouldn't come out and dance when I played to you.
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#8. Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.
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#9. These 'messengers' will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to go, either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by the darkness of night.
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#10. I believe that the women were called by the Dodonaeans "doves" because they were barbarians, and so they seemed to the people of Dodona to talk like birds.
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#11. But I like not these great success of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.
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#12. Chances rule men and not men chances.
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#13. 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.
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#14. The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.
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#15. It is a law of nature that fainthearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.
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#16. Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.
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#17. The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
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#18. Now it happened that this Candaules was in love with his own wife; and not only so, but thought her the fairest woman in the whole world. This fancy had strange consequences.
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#19. Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.
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#20. The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.
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#21. In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
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#22. Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.
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#23. Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
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#24. In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
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#25. Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
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#26. I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.
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#27. Astyages had a daughter called Mandane, and he dreamed one night that she urinated in such enormous quantities that it filled his city and swamped the whole of Asia.
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#28. Force has no place where there is need of skill
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#29. The wooden wall alone should remain unconquered.
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#30. Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
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#31. He advises them that tough lands produce tough peoples, so, if they wish to retain the empire he has enabled them so spectacularly to gain, they must not even think about removing themselves to some softer, enervating environment.
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#32. Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.
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#33. No one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.
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#34. It is the closest place to the stars on Earth. (Kalkan)
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#35. philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and
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#36. After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons.
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#37. Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
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#38. We have two useless gods who never leave our island, but like to dwell in it constantly, Poverty and Helplessness.
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#39. A man trusts his ears less than his eyes.
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#40. Soft men tend to be born from soft countries.
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#41. God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.
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#42. The rule of the people has the fairest name of all, equality (isonomia), and does none of the things that a monarch does. The lot determines offices, power is held accountable, and deliberation is conducted in public.
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#43. A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.
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#44. Those who are guided by reason are generally successful in their plans; those who are rash and precipitate seldom enjoy the favour of the gods.
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#45. Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.
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#46. 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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#47. Love of honor is a very shady sort of possession.
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#48. I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
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#49. The hastening of any undertaking begets error, from which great losses are wont to come.
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#50. Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.
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#51. Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.
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#52. The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.
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#53. It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
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#54. human prosperity never abides long in the same place,
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#55. The trials of living and the pangs of disease make even the short span of life too long.
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#56. The saddest aspect of life is that there is no one on earth whose happiness is such that he won't sometimes wish he were dead rather than alive.
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#57. 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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#58. The gods love to punish whatever is greater than the rest.
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#59. 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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#60. We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.
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#61. If a man insisted on always being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
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#62. Before a man dies, hold back and call him not happy but lucky.
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#63. 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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#64. must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only because the affectation of an archaic
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#65. Call no man happy before he dies.
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#66. He is the best man who, when making his plans, fears and reflects on everything that can happen to him, but in the moment of action is bold.
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#67. If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.
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#69. To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.
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#70. Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.
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#71. This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the winter-time, as we lie on soft couches after a good meal, drinking sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: Of what country are you, and how old are you, good sir? And how old were you when the Mede came?
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#72. The Colchians, Ethiopians and Egyptians have thick lips, broad nose, woolly hair and they are burnt of skin.
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#73. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]
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#74. Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
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#75. 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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#76. 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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#77. 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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#78. When a woman removes her garment, she also removes the respect that is hers.
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#79. 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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#80. Whatever comes from God is impossible for a man to turn back.
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#81. 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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#82. But if you know that you are a man too, and that even such are those that rule, learn this first of all: that all human affairs are a wheel which, as it turns, does not allow the same men always to be fortunate.
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#83. Where even a falsehood must be told, let it be told.
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#85. All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.
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#86. How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in greatness!
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#87. All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
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#88. Great things are won by great dangers.
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#89. The man of affluence is not in fact more happy than the possessor of a bare competency, unless, in addition to his wealth, the end of his life be fortunate. We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendour, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.
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#90. Happiness is not fame or riches or heroic virtues, but a state that will inspire posterity to think in reflecting upon our life, that it was the life they would wish to live.
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#91. How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
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#92. As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.
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#93. It is better to be envied than pitied.
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#94. 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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#95. There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.
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#96. Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.
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#97. When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
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#98. 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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#99. Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.
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#100. Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal, while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before
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