Demosthenes   

Whoever it was, Sosius, that wrote the poem in honour of Alcibiades,
upon his winning the chariot-race at the Olympian Games, whether it
were Euripides, as is most commonly thought, or some other person,
he tells us that to a man's being happy it is in the first place requisite
he should be born in "some famous city." But for him that would attain
to true happiness, which for the most part is placed in the qualities
and disposition of the mind, it is, in my opinion, of no other disadvantage
to be of a mean, obscure country, than to be born of a small or plain-looking
woman. For it were ridiculous to think that Iulis, a little part of
Ceos, which itself is no great island, and Aegina, which an Athenian
once said ought to be removed, like a small eyesore, from the port
of Piraeus should breed good actors and poets, and yet should never
be able to produce a just, temperate, wise, and high-minded man. Other
arts, whose end it is to acquire riches or honour, are likely enough
to wither and decay in poor and undistinguished towns; but virtue,
like a strong and durable plant, may take root and thrive in any place
where it can lay hold of an ingenuous nature, and a mind that is industrious.
I, for my part, shall desire that for any deficiency of mine in right
judgment or action, I myself may be, as in fairness, held accountable,
and shall not attribute it to the obscurity of my birthplace.
But if any man undertake to write a history that has to be collected
from materials gathered by observation and the reading of works not
easy to be got in all places, nor written always in his own language,
but many of them foreign and dispersed in other hands, for him, undoubtedly,
it is in the first place and above all things most necessary to reside
in some city of good note, addicted to liberal arts, and populous;
where he may have plenty of all sorts of books, and upon inquiry may
hear and inform himself of such particulars as, having escaped the
pens of writers, are more faithfully preserved in the memories of
men, lest his work be deficient in many things, even those which it
can least dispense with.
But for me, I live in a little town, where I am willing to continue,
lest it should grow less; and having had no leisure, while I was in
Rome and other parts of Italy, to exercise myself in the Roman language,
on account of public business and of those who came to be instructed
by me in philosophy, it was very late, and in the decline of my age,
before I applied myself to the reading of Latin authors. Upon which
that which happened to me may seem strange, though it be true; for
it was not so much by the knowledge of words that I came to the understanding
of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled to follow the
meaning of words. But to appreciate the graceful and ready pronunciation
of the Roman tongue, to understand the various figures and connection
of words, and such other ornaments, in which the beauty of speaking
consists, is, I doubt not, an admirable and delightful accomplishment;
but it requires a degree of practice and study which is not easy,
and will better suit those who have more leisure, and time enough
yet before them for the occupation.
And so in this fifth book of my Parallel Lives, in giving an account
of Demosthenes and Cicero, my comparison of their natural dispositions
and their characters will be formed upon their actions and their lives
as statesmen, and I shall not pretend to criticize their orations
one against the other, to show which of the two was the more charming
or the more powerful speaker. For there, as Ion says-
"We are but like a fish upon dry land;" a proverb which Caecilius
perhaps forgot, when he employed his always adventurous talents in
so ambitious an attempt as a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero;
and, possibly, if it were a thing obvious and easy for every man to
know himself, the precept had not passed for an oracle.
The divine power seems originally to have designed Demosthenes and
Cicero upon the same plan, giving them many similarities in their
natural characters, as their passion for distinction and their love
of liberty in civil life, and their want of courage in dangers and
war, and at the same time also to have added many accidental resemblances.