(no subject)

“...we [Corinthians] contemplate the great contrast between the two national characters [Athens vs Sparta].

The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.

A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. [8] Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life.

To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.”

--- Thucydides. “The History of the Peloponnesian War.”