Tom Holland Quotes & Sayings

I thought, gazing at the beauty of the landscape again, it is as though the fiend has prevailed against the angels, and fixed his throne in a heaven, to rule it as though it were Hell. — Tom Holland

More people worship the rising than the setting sun, — Tom Holland

In the Arab world, at any rate, to doubt the traditional account of Islam's origins has been to risk death threats, prosecution for apostasy, or even defenestration.61 — Tom Holland

You cannot regulate desire. — Tom Holland

I think, from every actor I've ever spoken to, they say the biggest thing they regret from life is not finishing school. — Tom Holland

I completely and utterly rely on my mum. Without my mum, I would not be anywhere at all. I'd literally just be a couch potato. — Tom Holland

[T]he greater the sense of awe with which a text was regarded, the more complete might be the amnesia as to the original circumstances of its composition. — Tom Holland

Another woman, "whose face no one had ever seen outside the door of her house and who had never walked during the day in the city,"2 had torn off her headscarf, the better to reproach the king. Yusuf, in his fury, had ordered her daughter and granddaughter killed before her, their blood poured down her throat, and then her own head to be sent flying. — Tom Holland

This [for opposition leaders to claim royal lineage], in a world ruled by a republic, was what revolution had come to mean. — Tom Holland

The rabbis of Palestine were acknowledged to hold the advantage over those of Mesopotamia in several distinctive ways: they were more open to those who were not themselves scholars; they were better able to incinerate those who displeased them with a single glare; and they were more obsessively alert to the menace posed by menstruating women. — Tom Holland

We always want what we're not allowed. — Tom Holland

Prohibitions, trust me, only encourage bad behaviour. — Tom Holland

When you encounter the unbelievers, blows to necks it shall be until, once you have routed them, you are to tighten their fetters. — Tom Holland

[A] history of Islam's origins cannot be written without reference to the origins of Judaism and Christianity - and [ ... ] a history of the origins of Judaism and Christianity cannot be written without reference to the world that incubated them both. The vision of God to which both rabbis and bishops subscribed, and which Muhammad's followers inherited, did not emerge out of nowhere. The monotheisms that would end up established as state religions from the Atlantic to central Asia had ancient, and possibly unexpected, roots. To trace them is to cast a searchlight across the entire civilisation of late antiquity. — Tom Holland

Sasanian monarchy and the fabled Kayanid — Tom Holland

Winners are the favourites of heaven. — Tom Holland

Men are all such fashion-victims these days that, really, we can hardly blame women for feeling the pressure. — Tom Holland

Rome, over the years, had measurably benefited from the influx of foreign talent. — Tom Holland

Of all Rome's seven hills, however, the Palatine was the most exclusive by far. — Tom Holland

As one Saudi professor sternly tells his co-religionists, Only the writings of a practising Muslim are worthy of our attention. — Tom Holland

On stage you need to emphasize every emotion. But on screen you need to tone everything down and make it believable. — Tom Holland

The people the Quran describes have a deep and sophisticated knowledge of the Biblical Tradition. — Tom Holland

Gain cannot be made without loss to someone else. — Tom Holland

Kavad himself, if obliged to fight on a Jewish holy day, had been known to request his adversaries for a temporary truce. — Tom Holland

Stories of the Virgin being succoured by a friendly palm tree had actually been a Christian tradition for centuries, and seem in turn to have derived from a legend told by the pagan Greeks, was blithely ignored - as, of course, it was bound to be. — Tom Holland

The paradox, though, was already evident: that the more solidly the foundations of an English state were cemented together, so the harder did it become to present the island as a single realm. Seen in this light, Athelstan's conquest of York, the feat which had first served to project the power of the West Saxon monarchy deep into the north of Britain, can be seen as the decisive event in the making of Scotland as well as of England. There — Tom Holland

Set strictures on a person all you like, but the mind remains adulterous. — Tom Holland

Spirits flung down from heaven at the beginning of time still stalked the earth, hunting human prey; — Tom Holland

Always been, and the safety of the Republic would be assured. This was a presumption buried deep in the soul of every Roman. — Tom Holland

I don't mind sitting at home playing the guitar for a year as long as I'm making good films. — Tom Holland

The Roman character had a strong streak of snobbery: effectively, citizens preferred to vote for families with strong brand recognition, electing son after father after grandfather to the great magistracies of state, indulging the nobility's dynastic pretensions with a numbing regularity. — Tom Holland

The news, when it leaked out, caused outrage and horror in Rome. The Republic was never so dangerous as when it believed that its security was at stake. The Romans rarely went to war, not even against the most negligible foe, without somehow first convincing themselves that their preemptive strikes were defensive in nature. — Tom Holland

The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing into their depths, were tracing shadows darker than they understood. — Tom Holland

I have a photographic memory. — Tom Holland

Even when they have been felled, let alone when they are still standing and fighting, they never disgrace themselves, — Tom Holland

[T]here [is] no limit to what might not be achieved by an alliance between an imperial monarchy and revelations, if truly believed to be heaven-sent, of a prophet. — Tom Holland

Honour, in the Republic, had never been a goal in itself, only a means to an infinite end. And what was true of her citizens, naturally, was also true of Rome herself. For the generation that had lived through the civil wars, this was the consolation history gave them. Out of calamity could come greatness. Out of dispossession could come the renewal of a civilised order. — Tom Holland

The most important thing, in anything you do, is always trying your hardest, because even if you try your hardest and it's not as good as you'd hoped, you still have that sense of not letting yourself down. — Tom Holland

Achievement was worthy of praise and honor, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state. — Tom Holland

Once the world of ideas has been transformed, reality cannot hold out for long. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel — Tom Holland

While he may forget that he is Caesar, I never forget that I am Caesar's daughter. — Tom Holland

I'm literally tone-deaf with singing. It's unreal. — Tom Holland

That there existed no earthly empire so great or overweening that it might not one day be dashed to pieces — Tom Holland

When Nero, with a casual quip, declared 'mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since it was by means of a mushroom that Claudius has become a god',66 it — Tom Holland

JULIA: Oldest daughter of Julia and Agrippa. Owner of the smallest dwarf in Rome. Exiled in AD 8. — Tom Holland

Whatever else it may be, the Qur'an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths - none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra - we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named — Tom Holland

Enthusiasts for empire argued that Rome had a civilizing mission; that because her values and institutions were self-evidently superior to those of barbarians, she had a duty to propagate them; that only once the whole globe had been subjected to her rule could there be a universal peace. — Tom Holland

Here, amid the murk of such contradictory opinions, was ample opportunity for Augustus to consolidate his position yet further. Who better qualified than the Restorer of the Republic, after all, to realise the full potential of hypocrisy? — Tom Holland

When I'm acting, it's like I am the character - no one can talk to me. But I'm not so method I'd sell my house and live on the street to play a tramp. — Tom Holland

It was an article of faith to the Romans that they were the most morally upright people in the world. How else was the size of their empire to be explained? Yet they also knew that the Republic's greatness carried its own risks. To abuse it would be to court divine anger. Hence the Roman's concern to refute all charges of bullying, and to insist they had won their empire purely in self-defense. — Tom Holland

Just like any electorate, they delighted in making candidates for their favors sweat. — Tom Holland

Adrenaline has always been my thing. — Tom Holland

When I was young, my mom realized I could dance and hold a beat, and I really danced just for fun. It was good exercise. — Tom Holland