Quotes from Xenophon

but I have always thought that to need nothing is divine, and to need as little as possible is the nearest approach to the divine; and that what is divine is best, and what is nearest to the divine is the next best.

Again, if there is prospect of danger on the march, a prudent general can hardly show his wisdom better than by sending out advanced patrols in front of the ordinary exploring parties to reconnoitre every inch of ground

Men of Athens, I have never yet studied medicine, nor sought to find a teacher among our physicians; for I have constantly avoided learning anything from the physicians, and even the appearance of having studied their art. Nevertheless I ask you to appoint me to the office of a physician, and I will endeavour to learn by experimenting on you.

What good have you to offer, or what do you know of pleasure, you who refuse to do anything with a view of either? You don't even wait for the desire for what is pleasant: you stuff yourself with everything before you want it, eating before you are hungry and drinking before you are thirsty.

In my opinion, however, disasters such as these teach men this lesson with regard to anger: one ought not to punish even a slave in anger; for masters who have lost their tempers often do more harm to themselves than they inflict; but in dealing with enemies it is utterly and entirely wrong to launch an attack under the influence of anger and without deliberation. Anger does not look ahead, whereas deliberation is just as concerned with avoiding harm oneself as with inflicting it on the enemy.

When they are young, they are feeble in body, and when they get older, they are foolish in mind; they are maintained in their youth in effortless comfort, but pass their old age in laborious squalor, disgraced by their past actions and burdened by their present ones, because in their youth they have run through all that was pleasant, and laid up for their old age what is hard to bear.

It is better said Socrates, to change an Opinion, than to persist in a wrong one.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not. - Xenophon

your game is to attack on whichever flank you can best conceal your advance, or, still better, on both flanks simultaneously;

And given that my proposal were carried into effect, the only novelty in it is that, just as the individual in acquiring the ownership of a gang of slaves finds himself at once provided with a permanent source of income, so the state, in like fashion, should possess herself of a body of public slaves, to the number, say, of three for every Athenian citizen.

he should have the craft to appear absent when close at hand, and within striking distance when a long way off;

Glaucon, the son of Ariston, had conceived such an ardour to gain the headship of the state that nothing could hinder him but he must deliver a course of public speeches, though he had not yet reached the age of twenty. His friends and relatives tried in vain to stop him making himself ridiculous and being dragged down from the bema. Socrates, who took a kindly interest in the youth for the sake of Charmides the son of Glaucon, and of Plato, alone succeeded in restraining him.

But over and beyond all that can be written on the subject—inventiveness is a personal matter, beyond all formulas—the true general must be able to take in, deceive, decoy, delude his adversary at every turn, as the particular occasion demands. In fact, there is no instrument of war more cunning than chicanery;

We call a Man ungrateful, answered who having received a kindness, does not return the like, if occasion off ere.

Here, too, is a maxim to engrave upon the memory: in charging a superior force, never to leave a difficult tract of ground in the rear of your attack, since there is all the difference in the world between a stumble in flight and a stumble in pursuit.

Now, my maxim would be precisely converse: if you attack with a prospect of superiority, do not grudge employing all the power at your command; excess of victory (14) never yet caused any conqueror one pang of remorse.

I, Suethes, on the other hand, consider that there are no nobler and more brilliant possessions that a man, and particularly a man who holds power, can have than honour and fair dealing and generosity. A man who has these is rich in the possession of many friends and rich in the fact that many others want to become friends of his.

But before I invite you into my society and friendship I will be open and sincere with you, and must lay down this as an established truth, that there is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labour. The

Doubtless we owe it to a divine dispensation that our land is veined with silver; if we consider how many neighbouring states lie round us by land and sea and yet into none of them does a single thinnest vein of silver penetrate.

That the Life of Man may at all Times and Seasons, even in Afflictions, and in all Sorts of Circumstances, be universally employed in the Practice of Philosophy.

And how would you call what a small number of citizens should ordain, in states where the people is not the master, but all is ordered by the advice of a few persons, who possess the sovereignty? I would call whatever they ordain a law; for laws are nothing else but the ordinances of sovereigns. If

if I die innocent the shame will fall on those who are the cause of my death, since all sort of iniquity is attended with shame. But

Cyrus was observed to have more docility than any of his years and to show more submission to those of an advanced age than any other children, though of a condition inferior to his own.

Socrates gave a lifetime to the outpouring of his substance in the shape of the greatest benefits bestowed on all who cared to receive them. In other words, he made those who lived in his society better men and sent them on their way rejoicing.