A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in the shade," replied a Lacedemonian.

What wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.
"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred." Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and water, which denoted submission.

The Athenians threw them into a ditch and told them, there was earth and water enough.
"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating.

"No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." "To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's noble defiance to the enemies of France.
Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hives because the bees have stings." "It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery.

"Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house; but his young son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or three years before.