Spartan General

Famous quotes containing the words spartan and/or general:

    “But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
    As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
    Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
    That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
    Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
    That I am still their servant though all are underground.”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)