Quotes About History

After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I've heard three truths from every mouth: (1) Writing is painful -- it's 'fun' only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.

I smoothed my grandmother's starched white damask cloth over the battered pine harvest table in the dining room, and with my fingertips, traced the tiny patches where she'd so painstakingly mended it. If I looked closely, and I did, I could see the faintest ghost outlines of stains from family dinners long ago.

It should not be a surprise, even if it is not expected, if a shadow dances among the leaves, a face appears (or seems to), even a community of phantoms from the past. Here you will find answers, questions, and a host of stories.

ever since Eugène Poubelle had become prefect of the Seine and issued strict laws governing street cleaning and garbage collection (thus giving his name to the French trash can).

The youngest son of an officer in Bonaparte's army, Hugo was born in 1802 near the Swiss border, in Besançon. Two years later, his mother, a confirmed royalist, gave up on her marriage, leaving Major Hugo to his mistress and his wars.

Significantly, it was while the final act of Italian unification was drawing closer that the First Vatican Council (on July 18, 1870) declared the doctrine of papal infallibility—increasing the pope's power in the spiritual realm at the very moment when his temporal powers were appreciably waning.

Renoir, as it turned out, was also deeply anti-Semitic.

When the struggling young painter Rodolphe Salis opened Le Chat Noir in 1881, he had no idea that he was about to make history.

1883, Printemps achieved the distinction of being the first department store in Paris to be lit electrically. Zola,

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.

Middle Ages

Ferdinand died in 1564 the great majority of the German people had become Protestants.

Even the Pyramids were made to serve his consummate art and ambition! Although

The religion of the Mongols at the time of the invasion was a paganism founded upon sorcery and magic; but they soon thereafter adopted Islamism,

Three thousand Russian families were sent to colonize Azof,

eight Muscovite Princes from Daniel (1260) to the death of Vasili (1462),

The Kremlin was built (1300)—not as we see it now.

over a hundred towns had combined together in what was called the "Hanseatic League." This

Frederick was now called "the Great" throughout Europe; and Prussia took her place among the "Five Great Powers." The

The dream of the people, like that of Hermann eighteen hundred years before, was of a German UNITY;

defective social organization and an arrogant nobility that ruined Poland.

The Holy Roman Empire was now the German Empire. And,

bonds of unity which could not be severed: A unity of race and language; a unity of historical development; a unity in religion; and the political unity created by the fact that all the thrones were filled by members of the same family,