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• Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race.
  Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me....
• Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of world
  and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answe...
• Alexander was wont to say, "Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Of the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Grea...
• The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George Wither.
  Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well"....
• Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece
  For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother....
• When Alexander asked Diogenes whether he wanted anything, "Yes," said he, "I would have you stand from between me and the sun.
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Life of Alexande...
• In his house he had a large looking-glass, before which he would stand and go through his exercises.
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Life of Demosthene...
• Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrume
  could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious....
• Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, "What a life," said he, "is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Philip...