167 Quotes by Herodotus

A man calumniated is doubly injured – first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.

As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.

What the History is really about lies behind this: man, giant-sized, seen against the background of the entire world, universalized in his conflict with destiny, the gods, and the cosmic order. The medium that is most fertile in showing the true nature of reality is the human mind, remembering, reflective, and fertile most of all when its memory and reflection are put at the service of its dreaming and fantastic side.

It is the work of unjust men, we think, to carry off women at all; but once they have been carried off, to take seriously the avenging of them is the part of fools, as it is the part of sensible men to pay no heed to the matter: clearly, the women would not have been carried off had they no mind to be.

They made it plain to everyone, however, and above all to the king himself, that although he had plenty of troops, he did not have many men.

Now stop your dancing; you wouldn’t come out and dance when I played to you.

I believe that the women were called by the Dodonaeans “doves” because they were barbarians, and so they seemed to the people of Dodona to talk like birds.

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.

Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.