Quotes About History

Sicily: A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to Cosa Nostra by John Julius Norwich

The first thing to know about living in an old house: The walls are alive.

It is not 2006 all over the world. So who are you in a place where 1950 or 1920 is about to arrive?

walk forwards in the radiance of the past

That must have been a ballroom once," she said, as she glanced back at the conference–cum–dining room. For an instant she could imagine it: Women dressed like Anna Karenina. Hussars and diplomats. Candlelight softening the lines on their faces. "And this used to be a garden," Michael added. "Like Stalin's world used to be Russia. It's only going to get drabber.

Isolated in the attic, Anne could only examine her own history and her own conscience, and try to locate the wellspring of her sadness and her rage.

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time.

The scheme of English colonization made no account of the Indian tribes. In the scheme of French colonization they were all in all.

Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him. Francis Parkman

When no obvious practical purpose for a possible structure presents itself, archaeologists tend to reach for their explanation of last resort, namely 'ritual', or religion.

e continuiamo a remare, barche contro corrente, risospinti senza posa nel passato.

Why isn't he dead?' he said eventually. 'That is a good question. After all, meaning well hasn't been a completely adequate shield in this century of ours.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine, Qu'Anglais brulerent a Rouen, Ou sont-elles, Vierge souv'raine, Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Momentous events, the stuff of a nation's history, were sometimes dependent on individuals commonly thought the least likely to set them in motion.

Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.

I didn't want to be different. I wanted to be able to laugh But I'm sister to an Emperor who's worshiped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared. I don't want to be part of history, I just want to be loved . . . and to love.

There are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness.

The past is no farther away than your pillow.

I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.

All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact—yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them.

The past may show the right way to behave if you live in the past, Stil, but circumstances change.

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. —Bene Gesserit Coda