"This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions."

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More by Livy

“They are more than men at the outset of their battles; at the end they are less than the women.”

“Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits.”

“From abundance springs satiety.”

“Truth, they say, is but too often in difficulties, but is never finally suppressed.”

“It is easier to criticize than to correct our past errors.”

“He will have true glory who despises it.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Pierre, who from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing hi…"

— Leo Tolstoy

Literature1828–1910

#humor

"Greeks and Latins appear in history lodged, like bees in their hives, within cities, poleis. … The polis is not primarily a collection of habitable dwellings, but a meeting-place for citizens, a space…"

— José Ortega y Gasset

Philosophy1883–1955

#family

"I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many…"

— William James

Psychology1842–1910

#science

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiri…"

— Rachel Carson

Literature1907–1964

#family