William Thomas

“And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere, that freedom is an excellent thing since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself.2 Despite Herodotus’s”
― Jim Lacey, The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon and Its Impact on Western Civilization

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“That is especially true,
since our whole life is struggling in the dark.
For just as children in the dead of night
tremble and are afraid of everything,
so we, too, in the daylight, sometimes fear------80
things which should no more frighten us than those
which scare children in the dark, those terrors
they believe will happen. Therefore, this fear,
this darkness in the mind, must be dispelled,
not by the sun’s rays or shafts of daylight,------[60]
but by the face of nature and by reason.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things

“It was as though her nature were so brimming over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina