Herodotus
Historian, known for his writings on the conflict between Greece and Persia, as well as the descriptions he wrote of different places and people he met on his travels.
It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.
Haste in every business brings failures.
"It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs."
It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.
When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
Force has no place where there is need of skill.
It is better to be envied than pitied.
Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.
This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.
"My men have turned into women and my women into men!"
Although he had plenty of troops he did not have many men.
In soft regions are born soft men.
Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon
That we who lie here obeyed their commands.
The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.
I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.
From Peloponnesos (came) the Lakedaimonians..., the Corinthians..., the Sikyonians..., the Epidaurians..., the Troiezenians... All these (groups)... belong to the Dorian and Macedonian nation (and) had emigrated last from Erineus and Pindos and Dryopis.
Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.
Before battle was joined they say that someone from Trachis warned him how many Persians there were by saying that when they fired their bows, they hid the sun with the mass of arrows. Dianeces, so the story goes, was so dismissive of the Persian numbers that he calmly replied, "All to the good, my friend from Trachis. If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight."
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.