Historical Quotes & Sayings

I been running up a bill with the devil ever since, and now he's come to collect on the debt. — Steven B. Weissman

If the world is an objective reality that exists independently of us, then humans themselves, even in their own eyes, are nothing more than objects, and their life stories merely a series of disconnected historical accidents, which they may wonder at, but which they themselves have nothing to do with. — Imre Kertesz

Someday, my love, you're going to understand just how much I care for you. You're my light, my warmth, my other half. I only feel alive when I'm with you. I love you. Caine — Julie Garwood

Do you miss wearing your kilt?" she asked.
"In London, it caused more bother than it was worth. Ladies either found it indecent or intriguing. A fair few found it to be both. I was never quite sure whether it was indecently intriguing or intriguingly indecent! — Marguerite Kaye

Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon. — Paul Di Filippo

All that I was and the world that was mine are gone forever. — Jenny Lloyd

On this night of the Harvest Moon. They tossed bones into the "Bone Fire" and asked the yellow moon to shine its protection over them. (Today we call it a "Bonfire") — Nancy B. Brewer

In India there was a sense of time that does not tick with modern clocks, just as there is a knowledge that is not gained through science and empirical experiments. In the modern West knowledge is of objective, finite particulars in historical time. India recognizes that kind of useful information: it calls it "lower knowledge." Higher knowledge (paravidya) proceeds differently, or rather it doesn't proceed at all but enters history full-blown on the morning of a new creation. — Huston Smith

To survive one tragedy was to learn you cannot survive them all, and this knowledge was both a freedom and a great loss. — Chris Womersley

But I am a writer, and I deal in words, and I need to have them spelled out for me
precisely. — Sydney Jane Baily

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."
"Go astray?"
"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. — Rick Riordan

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that. — Caroline Leech

I studied how to use the clothes washer. The handy instructions on the lid helped; so did the box of suds. It instructed me to separate the whites from the coloreds. Laundry will be the last American institution to desegregate. — Huston Piner

Romance means believing you are worthy of a happy ending. — Sarah Wendell

I loved reading historical novels when I was young, but I definitely don't think I wrote one. When I read my book through, when it was completely done and in printed galleys, I was surprised by how uninterested in the passage of time and history the book seemed to be. Even though you can feel it all there, that's just not what it's focused on. — Danielle Dutton

Everything burns if the flame is hot enough. The world is nothing but a crucible. — Andrew Davidson

He'd seen that absent look from her dozens of times in London. She thought herself invisible, and was not. Not to him. This was the second time he'd mentioned marriage to her. The second time she heard nothing but his words. — Carolyn Jewel

As a lady of clocklike precision yourself, you may appreciate my schedule. I have kept strictly to it every day for the past decade. From eight in the morning to eight in the evening, I devote myself to my duties. Then from eight in the evening to eight in the morning, I . . . do . . . not. — Erica Ridley

So when one adjusts for population size, the availability bias, and historical myopia, it is far from clear that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history. Sweeping that dogma out of the way is the first step in understanding the historical trajectory of war. — Steven Pinker

This isn't food." Bram picked up a lavender-iced cake between thumb and finger and stared at it. "This is ... edible ornamentation. — Tessa Dare

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious. — Cordelia Fine

I am a survivor. But I am not unique of the people that survived the great late war. We all have our stories to tell. But for most of us the hardened corners have soften with the passage of time. — Nancy B. Brewer

It is important to insist on the historical truthfulness of the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve. Just as the account of the creation of Adam and Eve is tied in with the rest of the historical narrative in the book of Genesis, so also this account of the fall of man, which follows the history of man's creation, is presented by the author as straightforward, narrative history — Wayne Grudem

Fear has a far greater grasp on human action than the impressive weight of historical evidence. — Jeremy Siegel

In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit. — Billy Beane

There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others, has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections has with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability and predestination of every act he commits. "The hearts of kings are in the hand of God." The king is the slave of history. — Leo Tolstoy

In order to experience and understand what it means to be a Christian, it is always necessary to recognize a definite historical situation. — Johann Baptist Metz

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

There is no such thing as a historical fatality; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have hesitated to act when action was still possible. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

About Anna Faktorovich's "Romances of George Sand": "What a read! Not lacking in action and very imaginative. — Belinda Jack

I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one. — Karen A. Chase

On several occasions, we are informed that the professional ideal 'took steps', 'organised assaults', and 'selected social problems'. But this is anthropomorphic metaphor implausibly masquerading as historical explanation. — David Cannadine

One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past. — George Crumb

The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to detect at first encounter. When a radically new interpretation of a large segment of history makes its appearance, time is needed to sift the evidence. — Edmund Morgan

I can honestly say that there are many forms of atheism that I find far more admirable than many forms of Christianity or of religion in general. But atheism that consists entirely in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism. And it is sometimes difficult, frankly, to be perfectly generous in one's response to the sort of invective currently fashionable among the devoutly undevout, or to the sort of historical misrepresentations it typically involves. — David Bentley Hart

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose. — Geoffrey Elton

As historical texts become rich and conceptually dense, readers may slow down not because they fail to comprehend, but because the very act of comprehension demands that they stop to TALK with their texts. In plain English, they pretend to deliberate with others by talking to themselves. — Sam Wineburg

I am here, Bella. Let me cherish you as you deserve.
- Sebastian Stanhope — Diana Quincy

You could cut ... all that out."
"You mean the men. Perhaps I could. I'm quite sure I could. But you see, Joe, I don't want to. What you call unnatural is the very essence of my nature. — Mel Bossa

Camhanach, it is a bargain as old as the world itself." He chuckled.
"Women want protection...men want a willing lass to warm their bed. — Shelly Thacker

In this case, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger's orders were being carried out - "anything that flies on anything that moves," an open call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. — Noam Chomsky

When I started writing, I didn't have the common sense to use a pseudonym, so I write under my own name. If I did have a pen name, though, it would be something very historical - something that sounds very sort of Regency ... Sophia something. — Nicola Cornick

It is amazing what a woman can do if only she ignores what men tell her she can't. — Carol K. Carr

Mogadishu the beautiful - your white-turbaned mosques, baskets of anchovies as bright as mercury, jazz and shuffling feet, bird-boned servant girls with slow smiles, the blind white of your homes against the sapphire blue of the ocean - you are missed, her dreams seem to say. — Nadifa Mohamed

Weber,... argues that... personal bias should not preclude the scientific ascertainment of objective historical facts. — Max Weber

Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman. — George Santayana

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented. — Sara Sheridan

There's no such thing as a limit on being the best. You can always go for more. That's what it means to be human. No... That's what it means to be me. - Claire Stanfield — Ryohgo Narita

We can no longer afford our historical sentimentality, even addiction, to the past. — Michael Frost

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past. — Peter Carey

The discovery of a completely unknown manuscript at a period in which historical science is carried to such a high degree appeared almost miraculous. We hastened, therefore, to obtain permission to print it, with the view of presenting ourselves someday with the pack of others at the doors of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, if we should not succeed - a very probable thing, by the by - in gaining admission to the Academie Francaise with our own proper pack. This permission, we feel bound to say, was graciously granted; which compels us here to give a public contradiction to the slanderers who pretend that we live under a government but moderately indulgent to men of letters. — Alexandre Dumas

My wishing star glowed slightly and winked back at me. I could almost hear its voice, tinkling like wind chimes and church bells, reassuring me that everything would return to normal. — Erica Sehyun Song

Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. — Rick Perlstein

If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of. — David Hume

My father loved to take us on historical vacations, and you should have seen the stares we received in East Berlin. — Marcus Samuelsson

Eating a Paleolithic diet is not about historical re-enactment; it is about mimicking the effect of such a diet on the metabolism with foods available at the supermarket. There was no one diet eaten throughout the entire Paleolithic, nor is there a single diet eaten by contemporary hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer diets can vary substantially depending on the geography, season, and culture. Even so, the commonalities among hunter-gatherer diets provide useful parameters for a healthy modern diet. — John Durant

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history. — Antony Sher

Jealousy is nothing but a fear of being abandoned — Heidi Heilig

The thing that most haunted me that day, however ... was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred ... For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away. — Elizabeth Kostova

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. "Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men's trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It's a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!"
I had turned to call back to him, "I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today! — Gwenn Wright

Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth.
Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
AIDS is mankind's greatest plague.
Israel only kills terrorists.
America never bombed Lebanon.
Jesus was straight. Juda and he were just friends.
Roseanne's parents molested her as an infant.
Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic. — Rabih Alameddine

History shows us a window into our past. Historical fiction can take us by the and and lead us into that world. — Judith Geary

2. The Book of Revelation. Does the book of Revelation give us a blueprint of coming world turmoil (the futurist position)? Or have some of the events in Revelation already taken place throughout church history, with some still to come (the historicist or historical approach)? Or does Revelation report events that were current at the time of writing but are now completed (the preterist view)? Or does Revelation speak in a timeless, symbolic way of the life of the church between the comings of Christ (the symbolic or idealist view)? Or is some combination — Robert L. Plummer

To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile! — Washington Irving

Apparently, the Athena Parthenos had wanted them to visit a place with educational value, because she'd landed right next to a historical marker that read MASSACRE OF BUFORD, on a gravel layby at the intersection of Nowhere and Nothing. — Rick Riordan

Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you! — Nancy B. Brewer

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order. — Mikhail Gorbachev

So the Bawdy Bluestocking was the proprietress of her own shop, selling lurid novels to ladies in the front and more esoteric fare in the back, from the looks of the shelves around him. He spied Pope and Crabbe, Shakespeare, of course, and names he did not recognize at all. He wondered how she chose her stock and where it came from. She must spend her days in endless research. The thought was unaccountably lovely to him. — Evelyn Pryce

Fortifications, artillery, foreign aid - will be of no value, unless the ordinary soldier knows that it is HE guarding his country — Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

She promised you'd get to shore in one piece.' Cheap said, 'and I won't make a liar out of her. But if you know what's good for you, you'll forget about that girl. Ask anyone on the coast. Or the Lord God himself. They'll tell you. Lucas Cheap sailed with the Brethren. He makes good ever on his threats. — Donna Thorland

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. "We must be quick." He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet. — Gregory Figg

Prisoners!" Finan shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive. — Bernard Cornwell

Space is space,life is life,everywhere is the same. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with which to fill my leisure, I pamper my melancholy and try to find in the vacuousness of the desert a special historical poignancy. Vain, idle, misguided! How fortunate that no one sees me! — J.M. Coetzee

I love stepping back in time — Frances McCarthy

History is rooted in the future — Terence McKenna

Neither does she have a name
none that I could find even in my most persistent researches: Julian's gentle lady, I mean; she whom I sought and chased and wooed (as it were) down a warren of historical tunnels. — Walter Wangerin Jr.

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Our thinking is permeated by our historical myths — Freeman Dyson

The historical side of fashion was very attractive to me when I was a teenager in Moscow, working for the costume departments in various Russian theater companies. — Alexander Vassiliev

I love you enough to keep you from dying with me... ~ Dane de Falaise — Gayle Mullen Pace

It was regarded as almost outside the proper interest of an analyst to give systematic attention to a person's real experiences. — John Bowlby

Except I was hoping someday to see you standing on a ship's deck in your shirtsleeves with a cutlass between your teeth."

"Maybe it can be arranged — Melanie Dickerson

The woman with hair of flames knelt over me. She might have been pretty if not for the anger in every corner of her face. Emerald eyes glowed with almost seeping venom as her nostrils flared.
- Lord Tristan Dracanburh, Ethandun — Alexandra May

In Europe there's been a kind of social contract. It's now declining, but it has been largely imposed by the strength of the unions, the organised work force and the relative weakness of the business community (which, for historical reasons, isn't as dominant in Europe as it has been here). European governments do see primarily to the needs of private wealth, but they also have created a not insubstantial safety net for the rest of the population. They have general health care, reasonable services, etc. We haven't had that, in part because we don't have the same organised work force, and we have a much more class-conscious and dominant business community. — Noam Chomsky

The United States media is advocating for the country to go to battle with Spain and take over Cuba and Puerto Rico to gain advantage over the Atlantic," said Manuel. "They have swayed public opinion. I would not be surprised that the countries go into war, and we are caught in the middle. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination. — Guy Davenport

What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we're looking at is not a historical event but - and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it - a racket. — Ernst Zundel

Such revolutions in formal learning and felt experience needed new modes to express their understanding, beyond sonorous Ciceronian periods and the rigid structure of heroic couplets. It needed something looser, longer, and above all historical, which could not only link events, data, ideas, and context through time, but in which history could itself serve as an informing principle. The age craved creation stories in which the logic and moral order were manifest in and through the unfolding of the story. — Lydia Pyne

He couldn't escape it. She'd begun re-calibrating his senses the moment she came through that library door. His peripheral vision was now trained for flashes of golden hair: his ears, trained for her melodic laugh. He found himself following the drifting scent of her soap and dusting powder, like a dog panting after the butcher's wife. — Tessa Dare

[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Reversing the historical trajectory of human eating, for this meal the forest would be feeding us again. — Michael Pollan

Historical experience shows that a crisis causes either a recovery or catastrophic consequences. — Sergei Lavrov

For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then. — Michael Haneke

Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born. — Pamela Clare

I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come ... " He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi' your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye ... ." He shook his head slowly. "I did think I should die, if I didna have ye," he said softly. "Just then. — Diana Gabaldon

I'm not God, and I can't always offer chances. I'm not sure if this won't be your last. — Kellyn Roth

Marriage, after all, is only a little detail in life. — Orna Ross

P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women. — Paulo Freire

They wouldn't have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain.
And I had no explanation, no answers. When you're on a battleground, you don't have the
luxury of time to dwell on the various historical factors and sociopolitical influences that caused the war.
You just keep your head down and try to survive it, to shove the pages back in the book, close
the covers and pretend that nothing's broken, nothing's wrong. — Jennifer Weiner

Oxthorpe stood. He could do nothing else.
Her hands stilled, and her smile faded away. She stood and dropped into a curtsy. What did one say in such situations, when one knew a lady disapproved? "Miss Clay," he said.
"Duke." She'd given the field laborer a happier smile than she gave him. Most everyone else had stopped smiling, too. This was the effect he had on others. He was the Duke of Oxthorpe, and though he did his duty by his title and his estate, he was not beloved. He did not know how to be beloved the way Miss Clay was. — Carolyn Jewel