Quotes from Charles Oman

Wherever Mohammedanism has taken root, it has led at first to rapid and enthusiastic outbursts of vigor, but it seems gradually to sap the energy of the nations which adopt it, and leads, after a

he who has trembled before the pedagogue's rod will not face the spear willingly.

His mental powers alone made him formidable, for he was not only a general of note, but a wily politician, faithless not with the light and heady fickleness of a savage, but with the deliberate and malicious treachery of a professional intriguer.

when brought into contact with the empire, picked up all the vices of its decaying civilisation without losing those of his original barbarism. It is not without some reason that the doings of Gaiseric have left their mark on the history of language in the shape of the modern word ' Vandalism.

The Vandal King's special foibles were the conclusion of treaties and armistices which he did not intend to keep, and a large piratical disregard for the need of any pretext or justification for his raids

Most of us still believe to-day, that [history] is not merely concerned with the stringing together of facts in their correct order and the reconstruction of annals, but with something more. We must draw the moral . . . [W]e yet hold that history has its lessons, and that they can be discovered and taught. 'The experience of the past', as Stubbs wrote, 'can be carried into the present: study gives us maxims as well as dry facts.