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

In soft regions are born soft men.

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

The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.

The most hateful grief of all human griefs is to have knowledge of a truth, but no power over the event.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

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.