Quotes by Historians - Page 4

Above all things never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
André Maurois
Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.
Friedrich von Schiller
Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.
Francesco Guicciardini
Hockey captures the essence of the Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold hockey is the dance of life and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
Bruce Kidd
God comes at last when we think he is farthest off.
James Howell
Speech is silvern silence is golden.
Thomas Carlyle
The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Every noble crown is and on earth will ever be a crown of thorns.
Thomas Carlyle
We enter the world alone we leave it alone.
James Froude
And so make life death and that vast forever One grand sweet song.
Charles Kingsley
I was never less alone than when by myself.
Edward Gibbon
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
Carl Sandburg
Only a few human beings should grow to the square mile they are commonly planted too close.
William T. Davis
There are four varieties in society the lovers the ambitious observers and fools. The fools are the happiest.
Hippolyte Taine
In any assembly the simplest way to stop the transacting of business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.
Jacques Barzun
Fools take to themselves the respect that is given to their office. Aesop It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Snobs talk as if they had begotten their ancestors.
Herbert Agar
The public has a taste for supping with the great.
Ulick O'Connor
It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
Woodrow Wilson
Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world insincerity is the most dangerous.
James Froude
Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt.
Thomas Carlyle
I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.
David Hume
He that falls into sin is a man that grieves at it is a saint that boasteth of it is a devil.
Thomas Fuller
Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.
Esther de Waal
Silence is deep as Eternity speech shallow as Time.
Thomas Carlyle
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Thomas Carlyle
Men fear silence as they fear solitude because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
André Maurois
I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself.
Charles Montesquieu
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Edward Gibbon
The destiny of man is in his own soul.
Herodotus
Every tub must stand on its own bottom.
Thomas Fuller
Even the cry from the depths is an affirmation: Why cry if there is no hint or hope of hearing?
Martin Marty
Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.
André Maurois
Temptations come as a general rule when they are sought.
Margaret Oliphant
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
J. A. Froude
I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
I am better than my reputation.
Friedrich von Schiller
I'm a vague conjunctured personality more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.
Woodrow Wilson
Medieval Technology? The Middle Ages invented among other things the crank the horse collar eyeglasses the flying buttress the stirrup the windmill the wheelbarrow printing firearms paper the canal lock the compass the rudder the mechanical clock the spinning wheel and the treadle.
Joseph and Frances Gies
Whenever science makes a discovery the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
Alan Valentine
There is more than a mere suspicion that the scientist who comes to ask metaphysical questions and turns away from metaphysical answers may be afraid of those answers.
Gregory Zilboorg
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Ernest Renan
He had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry.
H.G.Wells
Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.
Arthur Schlesinger
Madness is part of all of us all the time and it comes and goes waxes and wanes.
Otto Friedrich
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
Thomas Carlyle
They say so is half a lie.
Thomas Fuller
Candour and generosity unless tempered by due moderation lead to ruin.
Tacitus
Every noble crown is and on Earth will forever be a crown of thorns.
Thomas Carlyle
As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
Francesco Guicciardini
Better hazard once than always be in fear.
Thomas Fuller
All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him if he front it not bravely it will keep its word.
Thomas Carlyle
They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life do not on that account shrink from danger.
Thucydides
If one is forever cautious can one remain a human being?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness-and fewer those who have taken that chance.
André Maurois
He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.
Thomas Fuller
Any life truly lived is a risky business and if one puts up too many fences against the risks one ends by shutting out life itself.
Kenneth S. Davis
I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle
I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale