Quotes About History

Friends can be a pain. They can be demanding and hard work. But maybe that's because they're the wrong friends. I read a quote once, can't remember who by, but they said that your friends aren't necessarily the people you like best, they're just the people who got there first.

She knew that the Fascists had risen to power via violence.

His study of war had only reinforced its futility.

the widespread illiteracy of Sicily in the 1800s was one reason the class system was fixed in place, denying opportunity and equality to so many.

Jews had lived in Sicily before Christians, settling on the east coast, then spreading outward, flourishing under Muslim rule. Palermo became a Jewish center, but everything changed under Aragonese rule.

To have seen Italy without seeing Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything. —GOETHE, ITALIAN JOURNEY

some historians call Sicily "the world's island" because it has been conquered by so many peoples, owing to its location in the middle of the Mediterranean, valuable for trade and military reasons. Sicilians have been influenced by each culture, and the island's amazingly diverse history is reflected in its dramatic architecture, ruggedly beautiful terrain, delicious food, sibilant language, even the faces of its people.

its earliest roots to the luxuriant lemon groves around Palermo, arising from a unique set of circumstances in the 1800s, which combined legal, social, political, and even agricultural factors.

Every pandemic in the history of the world has come from China.

I remember a song we used to sing, Columbia, Gem of the Ocean. But I thought it was, Columbus, Jump in the Ocean.

Yao Niang, the first tiny-footed lady. When that woman

This is how things were: heavyhearted, but done in the traditional manner. THE

I close my eyes. I hear the voices of the past in the wind and in the beating of my heart.

Any daughter-in-law who lets the real truth of her life become public brings shame to both her natal and husband's families, which, as you know, is why I have waited until they were all dead to write my story.

She's grabbed onto old traditions-outdated traditions- in the same way I latch onto them now: as a means of survival, as a way to hang on to ghost memories.

What could I do, to make the most of this day, whether I was in my own day, or this one? What amazing history was I seeing firsthand? Would I embrace it, instead of crying and whining? Was it in me to be grateful for my situation? Truly in me?

We had a great friendship, good sex, a shared passion for the dinosaur room at the Museum of Natural History and Haagen-Daz French Vanilla ice cream. But love is more than the sum of its parts, isn't it?

Ignorance and fear were responsible for so much horror in the world. All the most heinous acts throughout history could be linked to those demons.

My husband used to say, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call.

History provides a great example but a terrible excuse.

Yet long afterward, when all had passed away into distant memory, there were many who wondered whether King Taran, Queen Eilonwy, and their companions had indeed walked the earth, or whether they had been no more than dreams in a tale set down to beguile children. And, in time, only the bards knew the truth of it.

What you call ancient custom is just a bad habit. Somebody did something stupid long ago and you've been doing it ever since. It doesn't make anything better. It only gets stupider and stupider.

Thus he illustrated a perennial problem of new theological thinking: it is all too soon forgotten as a new generation arises, one that 'knows not Joseph'.