Quotes from book
Histories
The Histories of Herodotus is considered the founding work of history in Western literature. Written in 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece at that time. Although not a fully impartial record, it remains one of the West's most important sources regarding these affairs. Moreover, it established the genre and study of history in the Western world .
“In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.”
Variant translation: In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
Book 1, Ch. 87.
The Histories
“This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.”
Book 9, Ch. 16
Variant translations:
Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
The Histories
Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories
Book 3, Ch. 38
The Histories
Book 1, Ch. 56; as translated in The Histories (1998) by Robin Waterfield and Carolyn Dewald http://books.google.com/books?id=Or5CKl1ObX4C&pg=PA24 pp. 23-24 ISBN 0192824252, 9780192824257
The Histories
Book 4, Ch. 74.
The Histories
“It is better to be envied than pitied.”
Book 3, Ch. 52
The Histories
Variant: How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
“I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.”
Book 7, Ch. 152.
The Histories
Book 5, Ch. 22, 1 (Loeb).
The Histories
“Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon
That we who lie here obeyed their commands.”
Book 7, Ch. 228.
The Histories
Book 7, Ch. 50 (trans. George Rawlinson)
Variant translation: It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
The Histories
