We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.
Look at what has occurred in history. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was not surprising, but it was unexpected. Who predicted the Arab Spring? Nobody expected it, but all the ingredients were there. I think all the ingredients are also there for Quebec to become a country. But when? That's another question.
Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world.
We investigate the past not to deduce practical political lessons, but to find out what really happened.
The craving for colour is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Colour is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.
Texas was such a welcoming place, and with its unbelievable history and tradition, it's extra special to be a part of that.
The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
But I see history as a book with many pages--and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning.
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula.
All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.
Advent's intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church's year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart's memory so that it can discern the star of hope.
Slavery is nothing to joke about! And the history of this nation's [the USA's] involvement with slavery is nothing to pass off in a joke.
In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.
The history of empires is the history of human misery.
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.
What we learn from History is that no one learns from History
England will still be England, an everlasting animal, stretching into the future and the past and like all living things having the power to change out of all recognition and yet remain the same.