Quotes About History

When he was almost two, his father was killed in battle during the Seven Years War, the world's first global combat.

leaders who think the story of life is all about them may achieve temporary successes but are usually remembered in history's narrative as a villain.

A real blow to OGPU came from Bukharin in autumn 1924:

The Bolsheviks attacked the Russian state not because it was oppressive but because it was weak.

anachronisms.

You don't suppose they're really expecting figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer," I muttered. "I thought your history professor friend said that historically accurate wassail would be mulled beer." "I'll put on the coffee," Michael said, heading downstairs. "I rather think that would be the suitable Southern Baptist equivalent.

We're each an amalgamation of all those in our lineage. - Fergus McCrae

Old books had always filled Brunetti with nostalgia for centuries in which he had not lived.

And today, to the best of his knowledge, no one spoke against it, either, but today the silence was based on the belief that slavery had ceased to exist.

he involved in the bankruptcy of that plastics factory? Ten years ago? Fifteen?' Of course, that was where Brunetti had read the name: the factory up near

Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn't matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you're aristocrats.

And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

You want to know what Classics are? said a drunk Dean of Admissions to me at a faculty party a couple of years ago. I'll tell you what Classics are. Wars and homos.

People die, sure," my mother was saying. "But it's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

how strange to find that the present contained such a bright shard of the living past, damaged and eroded but not destroyed.

it's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle. p28

or rather, how strange to find that the present contained such a bright shard of the living past, damaged and eroded but not destroyed.

La gente muore, questo è un dato di fatto» diceva la mamma. «Ma il modo in cui perdiamo le cose è insensato e terribile. Per incuria. Incendi, guerre. Il Partenone utilizzato come un magazzino per le munizioni, ma ci pensi? Tutto ciò che sopravvive alla Storia dovrebbe essere considerato un miracolo.»

The most satisfying of languages, Latin.

I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

Nihil sub sole novum

It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

But it's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

The light of long ago is different from the light of today, and yet here, in this house, I'm reminded of the past at every turn.