“And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
— Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Dryden trans., rev. A. H. Clough)
“Hope also and cupidity, the one leading and the other following, the one conceiving the attempt, the other suggesting the facility of succeeding, cause the widest ruin, and, although invisible agents, are far stronger than the dangers that are seen.”
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Richard Crawley)
“Croesus, thou art inquiring about human fortunes of one who well knows that the Deity is altogether envious and apt to disturb our lot.”
— Herodotus, The Histories, Vol. I (trans. G. C. Macaulay)
“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
— George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. I: Reason in Common Sense (1905)
“Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.”
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Richard Crawley)
“The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.”
— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 (1776)
“Now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for itself, but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case of a man, no single person is complete in himself, for one thing he has and another he lacks”
— Herodotus, The Histories, Vol. I (trans. G. C. Macaulay)
“My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.”
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Richard Crawley)
“An ideal carries no extrinsic assurance that its realisation would be a benefit.”
— George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. I: Reason in Common Sense (1905)
“The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.”
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Richard Crawley)
“But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them.”
— Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Dryden trans., rev. A. H. Clough)
“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
Every quote in this collection was verified
against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it
truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
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