Herodotus

The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.

The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.

All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.

Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.

One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.

Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, their arrows would block out the sun. Dienekes, however, undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we will fight in the shade.

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.

Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.

The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

Great things are won by great dangers.

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.