I am the shortest and least funny person in my family.
In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction
The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.
I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?
Rather an end in horror, than horror without end. He could not condemn principles he might need to invoke and apply later. The wolf cannot help having been created by God as he is, but we shoot him all the same if we have to. The great player in diplomacy, as in chess, asks the question,Does this improve me?, not look at the possible fringe benefits If you can't have what you like, you must like what you have.
Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.
My life is a gift not an obligation and I Get To make the most of it.
Honour travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast.
Maybe it's good that we are so slow with everything. We were saved from the damages that took place in the last 10 or 15 years in the scene.
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.