Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.

It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

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.

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

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.