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bearing ever in mind that it does not become men who promise great things to waste their time on little things,1 nor yet to make the kind of speeches which will improve no whit the lives of those whom they convince, but rather the kind which, if carried out in action, will both deliver the authors themselves from their present distress2 and win for them the credit of bringing to pass great blessings for the rest of the world.3
1 This very complaint he makes of his rival sophists. See Isoc. 13.1, 10.
2 Not too urbanely he dwells upon the poverty of his rivals. Cf. Isoc. 13.4, 7.
3 The kind of discourse to which Isocrates himself devoted his serious efforts. See Isoc. 12.11 and General Introd. p. xxiv.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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