The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.

Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.

To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals.

For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.