Top 100 Herodotus's Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Herodotus's

#1. This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#2. Once when I felt a little bruised by censorship I sent through Herodotus's account of the battle of Salamis fought between the Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C., and since there were place names involved, albeit classical ones, the Navy censors killed the whole story.

John Steinbeck

#3. We have ample testimony to her sense of humor; Cleopatra was a wit and a prankster. There is no cause to question how she read Herodotus's further assertion that Egypt was a country in which the women urinate standing up, the men sitting down.

Stacy Schiff

#4. 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.

Herodotus

#5. 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.

Herodotus

#6. The trials of living and the pangs of disease make even the short span of life too long.

Herodotus

#7. It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.

Herodotus

#8. human prosperity never abides long in the same place,

Herodotus

#9. 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.

Herodotus

#10. The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.

Herodotus

#11. Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.

Herodotus

#12. Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

Herodotus

#13. The hastening of any undertaking begets error, from which great losses are wont to come.

Herodotus

#14. I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.

Herodotus

#15. Love of honor is a very shady sort of possession.

Herodotus

#16. 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.

Herodotus

#17. Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.

Herodotus

#18. Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.

Herodotus

#19. 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.

Herodotus

#20. A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

Herodotus

#21. 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.

Herodotus

#22. God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.

Herodotus

#23. Soft men tend to be born from soft countries.

Herodotus

#24. A man trusts his ears less than his eyes.

Herodotus

#25. We have two useless gods who never leave our island, but like to dwell in it constantly, Poverty and Helplessness.

Herodotus

#26. Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.

Herodotus

#27. All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.

Herodotus

#28. If you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul.

Herodotus

#29. 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.

Herodotus

#30. 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.

Herodotus

#31. 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]

Herodotus

#32. The Colchians, Ethiopians and Egyptians have thick lips, broad nose, woolly hair and they are burnt of skin.

Herodotus

#33. 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?

Herodotus

#34. Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.

Herodotus

#35. The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.

Herodotus

#36. 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.

Herodotus

#37. To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

Herodotus

#38. Hippocleides doesn't care.

Herodotus

#39. If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.

Herodotus

#40. 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.

Herodotus

#41. 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.

Herodotus

#42. Call no man happy before he dies.

Herodotus

#43. Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

Herodotus

#44. For as the body grows old, so the wits grow old and become blind towards all things alike.

Herodotus

#45. 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

Herodotus

#46. It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any otherplace.

Herodotus

#47. Before a man dies, hold back and call him not happy but lucky.

Herodotus

#48. 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.

Herodotus

#49. We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.

Herodotus

#50. 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.

Herodotus

#51. The gods love to punish whatever is greater than the rest.

Herodotus

#52. 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.

Herodotus

#53. The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.

Herodotus

#54. Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.

Herodotus

#55. Who the fuck's Herodotus?" Asked the Iceman.

Neil Gaiman

#56. 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.

Herodotus

#57. The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.

Herodotus

#58. It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.

Herodotus

#59. 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.

Herodotus

#60. History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia.

Herodotus

#61. Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks

Herodotus

#62. Chances rule men and not men chances.

Herodotus

#63. But I like not these great success of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.

Herodotus

#64. 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.

Herodotus

#65. 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.

Herodotus

#66. Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.

Herodotus

#67. Now stop your dancing; you wouldn't come out and dance when I played to you.

Herodotus

#68. 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 their own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best.

Herodotus

#69. The sun will not shine on any country that has borders with ours.

Herodotus

#70. I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.

Steven Pressfield

#71. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay.

Herodotus

#72. Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.

Herodotus

#73. The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.

Herodotus

#74. My men have become women, but the women men.

Herodotus

#75. The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.

Herodotus

#76. According to Herodotus, the ancient Persians felt that what was necessary in the background of a young man entering adulthood was his ability to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth. Perhaps we should now grant our college degrees to young men who measure up to that standard.

Jeff Cooper

#77. 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.

Herodotus

#78. It is the closest place to the stars on Earth. (Kalkan)

Herodotus

#79. 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.

Herodotus

#80. Europe's history of trading relations with India is borne out in the writings of the ancient historians Herodotus, Pliny, Petronius and Ptolemy, and

Shashi Tharoor

#81. Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.

Herodotus

#82. 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.

Herodotus

#83. Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

Herodotus

#84. The wooden wall alone should remain unconquered.

Herodotus

#85. Force has no place where there is need of skill

Herodotus

#86. The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

Herodotus

#87. If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own.

Herodotus

#88. Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that - if Herodotus can be believed - was unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats.

Stacy Schiff

#89. 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

Herodotus

#90. I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

Herodotus

#91. And in his third essay Herodius (not Herodotus, a mistaken pronunciation, perhaps) said 'We can contend with the evil that men do in the name of evil, but heaven protect us from what they do in the name of good.'

Richard Boone

#92. Do you see how the god always hurls his bolts at the greatest houses and the tallest trees. For he is wont to thwart whatever is greater than the rest.

Herodotus

#93. Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

Herodotus

#94. In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

Herodotus

#95. To the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough, God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him. THE HISTORIES, HERODOTUS, FIFTH CENTURY B.C. Indians

Robert Greene