Herodotus Quotes

95 quotes in 1125 categories

• Call no man happy before he dies.
• The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
• If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.
• As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.
• God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.
• I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
• The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.
• The Colchians, Ethiopians and Egyptians have thick lips, broad nose, woolly hair and they are burnt of skin.
• It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.
• History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia.
• We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.
• Mens fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.
• A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.
• 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…
• Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are preparing to use it; when they do not require it, they allow…
• A real friend ... exults in his friendÂ’s happiness, rejoices in all his joys, and is ready to afford him the best advice.
• If you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul.
• The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
• Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
• 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…

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