This I regard as history’s highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Falsehood avails itself of haste and uncertainty.
Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
People flatter us because they can depend upon our credulity.
Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.
In stirring up tumult and strife, the worst men can do the most, but peace and quiet cannot be established without virtue.
Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation.
Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
All those things that are now field to be of the greatest antiquity were at one time new; what we to-day hold up by example will rank hereafter as precedent.
It is common, to esteem most what is most unknown.
Posterity will pay everyone their due.
The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.
All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others.
Greater things are believed of those who are absent.
All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.
Even for learned men, love of fame is the last thing to be given up.
The desire of glory is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise.
Remedies are slower in their operation than diseases.
Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.