Quotes About History

The dead were just the dead, neither awful nor remarkable. History separated out these individuals and preserved their names where others were obilterated for ever.

Florence's scribes, scholars, and booksellers were at the forefront of a revolution in knowledge.

including the partial copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things—unseen by scholars for more than five hundred years—and eight previously unknown speeches of Cicero.

The Street of Booksellers, Via dei Librai, ran through the heart of Florence, midway between the town hall to the south and the cathedral to the north.

An old saying went back to the time of the Venerable Bede: "As long as the Colosseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall."11 The Roman people seemed sorely neglectful of this vital harbinger of the world's fate. It was used as a limestone quarry, as an open-air market, and, in the case of the Frangipane and Annibaldi clans, as a fortified palace from which to wage violent feuds against their enemies.

Vespasiano's biographies were crucial, therefore, to the formation of one of history's most famous and endearing (if sometimes misleading) narratives: how the rediscovery of ancient books refreshed and "rebirthed" a disoriented and moribund civilization.

Ancient Rome had ultimately boasted more than twenty public libraries. They were dotted around its hills and forums, housed in temples, palaces, and porticoes, even in the baths.

Top hats and frock coats were by 1863 a distinctly modern costume. The top hat had been invented in 1797 by the London haberdasher John Hetherington, who caused a riot when he stepped outside with one perched on his head: children screamed, women fainted, the arm of an errand boy was broken, and Hetherington was hauled before the courts to explain the meaning of his alarming new invention.

In Florence, more than anywhere else, large numbers of people could read and write, as many as seven in every ten adults. The literacy levels of other European cities, by contrast, languished at less than 25 percent.

The Latin verb "to fasten" was pangere, from which, via the Latin pagina, the word "page" descends. Suddenly it was possible to read a document by turning pages of parchment rather than unspooling a roll of papyrus.

Quite amazing how determined kings and emperors have been to destroy books. But civilization is built on such desecrations, is it not? Justinian the Great burned all of the Greek scrolls in Constantinople after he codified the Roman law and drove the Ostrogoths from Italy. And Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, the man who unified the five kingdoms and built the Great Wall, decreed that every book written before he was born should be destroyed.

That one of history's greatest brains struggled with amo, amas, amat should be consolation to anyone who has ever tried to learn a second language.

The Black Death was a faithful visitor to Florence. It arrived, on average, once every ten years, always in the summer.

how a people who had raised such mighty works, could have allowed themselves to be conquered by illiterate barbarians.

only if the past is understood can the future be navigated

The purpose of Biblical history is to trace the victory of Jesus Christ.

Men cannot give a meaning to history that they themselves lack, nor can they honor a past which indicts them for their present failures.

History as it comes from the hand of God has a preordained meaning and direction, and it moves to a purpose neither decreed by man nor conducive to man's sin. As a result, man is in revolt against history. Man pits against history the imagination of his fallen heart.

The postmillennial view, while seeing rises and falls in history, sees it moving to the triumph of the people of Christ, the church triumphant from pole to pole, the government of the whole world by the law of God, and then, after a long and glorious reign of peace, the Second Coming and the end of the world.

The realization occurs that hemp is not a deadly "drug" but simply a God-given plant, one with a long and distinguished history of service to mankind.

Only the arrogance of the modern mentality, worshipping at the altar of the church of progress, would reject and deny the history and virtues of hemp.

To engage with the Church's past is to see something of the Church's future.

salvation does not bypass the history and memory of guilt, but rather builds upon and from it.

we need to bear in mind that the Reformation debate was not one between self-designated Catholics and Protestants; it was a debate about where the Catholic Church was to be found. 'Is the Pope a Catholic?' was not a joke in the sixteenth century.