As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession.

Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.

It is a law of human nature that in victory even the coward may boast of his prowess, while defeat injures the reputation even of the brave.

For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief.

In victory even the cowardly like to boast, while in adverse times even the brave are discredited.

It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.