"Themistocles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Darius had been evilly entreated. And if it had not been for the resolution of the Athenians at this time, all Hellas would have been forced to submit to the Great King; for they, in despite of threatening oracles, held fast to their defiance, being urged thereto by Themistocles, who showed them how those oracles must mean that, although they would suffer evil things, they would be victorious by means of wooden bulwarks, which is to say, ships; and thus they were encouraged to rely upon building ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of a Themistocles this time; it is absolutely plain. The oracle just says in so many words that he is a quack, and we pack-asses (quite true) and mules to believe in him; we have not as much sense, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... and influence of which they may be deemed worthy, after an attentive and unprejudiced examination. To those who may at first be ready—because I do not agree with all their preconceived opinions—to doubt or deny my conclusions, I would say, in the language of Themistocles, "Strike, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... larger field to display itself in public affairs.—It seems to me impossible that they can ever acquire the species of direct power which you dread: their influence must be private; it is therefore of the utmost consequence that it should be judicious.—It was not Themistocles, but his wife and child, who governed the Athenians; it was therefore of some consequence that the boy who governed the mother, who governed her husband, should not be a spoiled child; and consequently ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... says that 'commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power.'[3] The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1885. At p. 574 of that volume (art. Persia) we are told that Themistocles was 'the founder of the Attic sea-power.' The sense in which the term is used differs in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call a 'naval power'—that is to say, a state having a considerable navy in contradistinction to a 'military power,' a state with a considerable ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... of Oriental superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes—Leonidas and Themistocles—cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I have attempted this piece ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... various instances cited of hundreds per cent; from whence, seeing how rotund and robust grows the worthy alderman, deplorable balance-sheets notwithstanding, which would prostrate the Bank of England like the Bank of Manchester, it should result that he, like another Themistocles, might exclaim to his family, clad in purple and fine linen, "My children, had we not been ruined, we should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of oracles was greatly lessened when they became an artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the Athenians to quit Athens, in order to be in a better condition to resist Xerxes, made the Pythoness deliver an oracle, commanding them to take refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythoness ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small states great—and the most dominant races who, like the Romans, have stretched their rule from a village half over the universe—have been distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices,' and 'lamentable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the factions which divide my country, and to the hostility of the greatest Powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career, and come, like Themistocles, to share the hospitality of the British people. I place myself under the protection of their laws, and I claim that from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... forbade him the city and any dominion the Athenians had power over), nevertheless that you are going to crown Demosthenes, who did not indeed bring gold from the Medes, but who received bribes and has them still in his possession. And Themistocles and those who died at Marathon and at Plataea, and the very graves of your ancestors—will they not cry out if you venture to grant a crown to one who confesses that he united with the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... style of an Italian artiste, suitable to his tragical disposition, and repeating a few badly learned Plutarchesque phrases, suitable to the classical education of his age, asked the English, his enemies, to accord him hospitality, as in ancient times Themistocles might have petitioned his enemies the Persians, the English replied by sending him to St. Helena. Bismarck in disfavor and disgrace solicits an asylum from his enemies, the commons, whom he has never defeated, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... inoculated with the classical mania of his preceptor; and, as he grew up, it was quite a treat to hear the pair discourse of Greeks and Romans. A stranger who had then heard them would have imagined that Themistocles and Scipio Africanus were stars of the present generation. When Graeme was nineteen, his uncle invited him to town for a month—a most unusual proceeding. During this period he studied closely his nephew's ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman |
