# Quote — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

> I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

- Author: [Thucydides](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides.md)
- Book: [History of the Peloponnesian War](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Book_II) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/i-could-have

## More from this book

> Ignorance produces rashness, reflection timidity

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> By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?

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> The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/the-dead-lay.md)