Quotes About History

Champlain missing was so much more potent than Champlain found.

It was like archeology. There was digging and there was dirt. And there was broken things.

It smelled of the past, of a time before computers, before information was "Googled" and "blogged." Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge.

Michael Brebeuf had long hated Armand. But he had loved him even longer.

I sometimes think we're a rowboat society." "A what?" asked Jean. "A rowboat. It's why we do things like that." He jerked his head toward the window and the dot on the river. "It's why Québec is so perfectly preserved. It's why we're all so fascinated with history. We're in a rowboat. We move forward, but we're always looking back.

Je me souviens,

A lot of what we know to be history isn't," said Gamache. "You know that, I know that. It serves a purpose. Events are exaggerated, heroes fabricated, goals are rewritten to appear more noble than they actually were. All to manipulate public opinion, to manufacture a common purpose or enemy. And the cornerstone of a really great movement? A powerful symbol. Take away or tarnish that and everything starts to crumble, everything's questioned. Can't have that.

Fluctuat nec mergitur." Every schoolchild in Paris learned those words. It was the motto of the ancient settlement of Lutetia. And of Paris.

Kebek. Una palabra algonquina que quería decir «donde el río se estrecha».

We look to the so-called important figures. We value the papers left behind by Premiers, Prime Ministers, Presidents—by the most prominent witnesses to history—and forget there are other witnesses. The people who actually lived it. The First Nations. The farmers. The cooks and cleaners and salespeople. The laborers. The immigrants, the minorities.

There was no written record of the earliest chants. They were so old, more than a millenium, that they predated written music.

Had he not been a cop, he'd have loved to be a historian or archivist. Going over old papers, finding curiosities buried in obscure libraries.

In old Quebec City, "magnificent" wasn't measured in square feet, but in details.

The Paston Treasure.

It's why we're all so fascinated with history. We're in a rowboat. We move forward, but we're always looking back.

leaden and laden by the recent past.

The Ouellet Quints.

This village was old, and you don't get to be old without knowing grief. And loss.

here" was the garden of the Musée Rodin, in Paris,

As a librarian and archivist herself, she knew that history wasn't just written by the victors. First it had to be erased and rewritten. Replacing troublesome truth with self-serving myth.

did. The Burghers of Calais." Armand raised his head and stared up into the eyes of Eustache.

There were Romulus and Remus. They were saved by a she-wolf. Suckled. But that was Roman mythology, not the bible. Wolves.

like buzz bombs in the Blitz.

It smelled of the past, of a time before computers, before information was "Googled" and "blogged." Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that