To pray is simple enough, Athenians, collecting all that one desires in a short petition: but to decide, when measures are the subject of consideration, is not quite so easy; for we must choose the profitable rather than the pleasant, where both are not compatible.
Addressing the Athenian assembly on critical policy decisions, Demosthenes distinguishes between the simplicity of prayer and the complex challenge of choosing beneficial but difficult courses of action over easy ones.
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Because our city is the only one where liberty is allowed to speak for the enemy, where a man taking a bribe may safely address the people, though they have been deprived of their possessions.
You can not surely allege, that Aristodemus ought to be of importance at Athens, and Athens to be of no account among the Greeks.
But I suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean.
Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence.
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