Herodotus Thermopylae Quotes

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

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

Great things are won by great dangers. ~ Herodotus

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

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

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

What the History is really about lies behind this: man, giant-sized, seen against the background of the entire world, universalized in his conflict with destiny, the gods, and the cosmic order. The medium that is most fertile in showing the true nature of reality is the human mind, remembering, reflective, and fertile most of all when its memory and reflection are put at the service of its dreaming and fantastic side. ~ Herodotus

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

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children. ~ Herodotus

The wooden wall alone should remain unconquered. ~ Herodotus

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. ~ Herodotus

Such was the number of the barbarians, that when they shot forth their arrows the sun would be darkened by their multitude." Dieneces, not at all frightened at these words, but making light of the Median numbers, answered "Our Trachinian friend brings us excellent tidings. If the Medes darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade. ~ Herodotus

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

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

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. ~ Herodotus

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

Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ William Blake

One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing. ~ Jerry Pournelle

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

Chances rule men and not men chances. ~ Herodotus

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence. ~ Richard Russo

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 ~ Herodotus

The Egyptians were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts both the space of time and the seasons which they delimit. It was observation of the course of the stars which led them to adopt this divisionIt is also the Egyptians who first bought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks adopted from them ~ Herodotus

Accordingly, Herodotus showed keen interest in understanding Persian politics, while Sima Qian was very concerned about the culture and religion of barbarous steppe people. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Whatever comes from God is impossible for a man to turn back. ~ Herodotus

When a woman removes her garment, she also removes the respect that is hers. ~ Herodotus

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

His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk. ~ Carl Sandburg

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

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

It is better to be envied than pitied. ~ Herodotus

Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to shoot: unbrace them when the shooting is over. Were they kept always strung they would break and fail the archer in time of need. So it is with men. If they give themselves constantly to serious work, and never indulge awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses and become mad. ~ Herodotus

We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see. ~ Herodotus

Hooper was no romantic. He had not as a child ridden with Rupert's horse or sat among the camp fires at Xanthus-side; at the age when my eyes were dry to all save poetry – that stoic, red-skin interlude which our schools introduce between the fast-flowing tears of the child and the man – Hooper had wept often, but never for Henry's speech on St Crispin's day, nor for the epitaph at Thermopylae. The history they taught him had had few battles in it but, instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recent industrial change. Gallipoli, Balaclava, Quebec, Lepanto, Bannockburn, Roncevales, and Marathon – these, and the Battle in the West where Arthur fell, and a hundred such names whose trumpet-notes, even now in my sere and lawless state, called to me irresistibly across the intervening years with all the clarity and strength of boyhood, sounded in vain to Hooper. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Force has no place where there is need of skill ~ Herodotus

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

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy. ~ Herodotus

Herodotus is not more indisputably the father of history than is Sir Boyle Roche the father of Bulls. No doubt there were makers of bulls before his day, even as brave men lived before Agamemnon; but they are not remembered, and if their bulls have survived them they are credited to Sir Boyle by a posterity generously forgiving and forgetful of his famous indictment. ~ Boyle Roche