Best Xerxes Quotes & Sayings

Xerxes: It isn't wise to stand against me, Leonidas. Imagine what horrible fate awaits my enemies when I would gladly kill any of my own men for victory.
King Leonidas: And I would die for any one of mine. — Frank Miller

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All over Greece, strangers of a certain age will greet one another with the question, "And where were you and what did you do when Xerxes came to Marathon?" Then they exchange lies. — Gore Vidal

Only by great risks can great results be achieved. — Xerxes I

Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic figures like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, and is one of the great fonts of world culture. — Stephen Kinzer

The sight of a certain depressed-to-the-max head of seaweed has made me quite ill. — Jun Mochizuki

And seeing all the Hellespont covered over with the ships and all the shores and the plains of Abydos full of men, then Xerxes pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he fell to weeping. Artabanus, his uncle, therefore perceiving him the same who at first boldly declared his opinion advising Xerxes not to march against Hellas-this man, I say, having observed that Xerxes wept, asked as follows: 'O king, how far different from one another are the things which thou hast done now and a short while before now! for having pronounced thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears.' He said : 'Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by. — H.G.Wells

When I review Xerxes' achievements, I praise him, not for having yoked the Hellespont, but for having crossed it. But I can see that Nero will neither sail through the Isthmus nor complete his digging. — Apollonius Of Tyana

Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn't do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years. — Peter Singer

Now now, Emily, it isn't nice to tell the truth. — Jun Mochizuki

It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity. — James Russell Lowell

Go now, run along and tell your Xerxes that he faces free men here, not slaves — Frank Miller

While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, Come and get them. — Plutarch