Related:

• Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Alcibiade...
• 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 Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!
  aid he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief....
• 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....
• In the Plaza Hotel once, when I was doing the quiz show, there was a priest in the elevator.
  I hope you're not offended by this--I'd tell a story about a rabbi but it doesn't fit, and neither did the rabbi and they finally threw him out of the synagogue....
• The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door He said, "I am not fighting for you anymore" The queen knew she had seen his face someplace before And slowly she let him inside.
  He said, "I see you now, and you're so very young But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won And I have this intuition that it's all for your fun And now will you tell me why?...
• Like Aesop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.
  -- Robert Burton (1577-1640) -- Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reade...
• To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you.
  -- Plutarch (46-120 AD) -- Iphicrate...
• Always tell him he is handsome, especially if he is not.