History of the Peloponnesian War

Never enemy yet fell into the hands of our whole forces at once both because we apply ourselves much to navigation and by land also send many of our men into divers countries abroad. But when, fighting with a part of it, they chance to get the better, they boast they have beaten the whole; and when they get the worse, they say they are beaten by the whole.

And yet when, from ease rather than studious labour and upon natural rather than doctrinal valour, we come to undertake any danger, we have this odds by it that we shall not faint beforehand with the meditation of future trouble, and in the action we shall appear no less confident than they that are ever toiling, procuring admiration to our city as well in this as in divers other things.