It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task.
LivyRead
This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.
Interpretation
History serves as a valuable resource, showcasing remarkable actions of the past that inspire future generations.
In this quote, Livy emphasizes the significance of history in our lives. He suggests that by studying history, we gain access to a remarkable collection of deeds and examples from the past that can guide and inspire us in the present and future. This record of exemplary actions not only offers a sense of glory but also serves as a reminder of the potential for greatness inherent in human endeavors.
In practice
A history teacher may use this quote to inspire students to appreciate the lessons from the past.
It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task.
Valor is the soldier's adornment.
The army from Asia introduced a foreign luxury to Rome; it was then the meals began to require more dishes and more expenditure . . . the cook, who had up to that time been employed as a slave of low price, become dear: what had been nothing but a metier was elevated to an art.
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies' resources, and minimized their own.
The troubles which have come upon us always seem more serious than those which are only threatening.
Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.
We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.
She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color.
The history of the world - by which, of course, we mean Europe - is a record of intertribal lacerations, of ethnic cleansings.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.