Alexander the Great - Quotes

Alexander the Great remains one of the most ambitious people in history. One of the books on his life is Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. Below are a few quotes from the book (and a few others I saw on the web):

• When Alexander mastered Bucephalus, Philip cried (Plut. Alex. 6), “My son, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedonia is too small for you.”
• “As he explained to his officers and men, the war against Persia could not be finished until the shah, as the Persians called their king, was mat, or finished. The endgame had to be shah mat, a Persian phrase that would evolve in time into checkmate.”
• "Alexander was and is the absolute embodiment of pure human ambition with all its good and evil consequences.”
• “As Alexander would confess years later, sex and sleep more than anything else reminded him that he was mortal"
• "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”
• Tough terrains make tough men.
• Alexander refused to drink when his army could not. He took the helmet of precious water and poured it on the ground in full view of his army. To the parched men, for their king to share in their suffering in this way meant more than the water soaking into the sand. They were so heartened, says Arrian, it was as if they had each drunk every drop that he poured on the ground.
• Julius Caesar studied Homer and Herodotus as carefully as any Greek scholar and wept when he saw a statue of Alexander on display at a temple in Spain on the shores of the Atlantic.

Other quotes by Alexander the Great (but not from this book)

• "Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters.”
• “Remember upon the conduct of each depends on the fate of all.”
• “You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.”
• It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.
• “I do not pilfer victory.”
• “A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.”
• “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”