What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad. - Mary Renault

Men are better watching the seasons, and putting good into the earth, than running together in cities, where they listen all day to each other's noises and forgot the gods. Acharnai is quite far enough.

"Don't talk so, Lysis. I'm sure you kept your head much better than I did." He smiled, and quoted a certain phrase, recalling a personal matter between us. Then he said, "Am I getting old, to find myself always thinking, 'Last year was better'?"-"Sometimes it seems to me, Lysis, that nothing has been the same since the Games."-"We think so, my dear, because that was our concern. If you asked that potter over there, or that old soldier, or Kallippides the actor, each would name his own Isthmia, I daresay... It has been a long war, Alexias. Twenty-four years now. Even Troy was only ten."

We started off, he and I, and the girl between us. She shivered as the cold struck her; he pulled the sheepskins higher, and put his arm with a fold of his cloak about her shoulders. I felt a sudden rush of the past upon me; for a moment grief pierced me like a winter night; yet it came to me like an old grief, I had suffered it long since and now it was behind me.