For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.

For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

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

They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.