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

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

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.

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

He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.

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.