War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.

An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.

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

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

Human nature is the one constant through human history. It is always there.

The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.