All Quotes By Tag: History

“They that be born in the strength of youth are of one fashion, and they that are born in the time of age, when the womb fail, are otherwise.”

“«Si las mujeres de nuestra generación, en vez de dedicar un tiempo precioso a bailes y a espectáculos, a modas que cambian incesantemente, a pláticas vanas y sin fruto, hubieran empleado su talento y su corazón en formar la fe en el alma de sus hijos, teniéndolos sobre sus rodilla, no veríamos en nuestro país tantos extraviados, tantos impíos, cuyo número y osadía van en continuo aumento».”

“A little murmur of admiration greeted this neat reply and on the crest of it the hostess rose to dismiss the meeting. The ladies rustled forward towards the lecturer but he, deprecating their flattery, came to greet Helena. “I was told your Majesty might do me the honor of coming.””I scarcely hoped you had recognized me. I am afraid the lecture was far above my head. But I am delighted to see you have prospered. Are you . . . are you able to travel as you wish?””Yes, I was given my freedom many years ago by a kind, foolish old woman who took a fancy for my verses.””Did you get to Alexandria?””Not yet, but I found what I wanted. Did you reach Troy, Highness?””No, oh no.” “Or Rome?””Not even there.””But you found what you wanted?””I have accepted what I found. Is that the same?””For most people. I think you wanted more.””Once. Now I am past my youth.””But your question just now. ‘When? Where? How do you know?’–was a child’s question.””That is why your religion would never do for me, Marcias. If I ever found a teacher it would have to be one who called little children to him.””That, alas, is not the spirit of the time. We live in a very old world today. We know too much. We should have to forget everything and be born again to answer your question.”

“I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within.Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape—more than human but also less, they were quite aware,the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never.As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges ClemenceauAdolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not followso straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian),and, burning under their masters, they proclaimedthe world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives riseto the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today,little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands.The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies,and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost,remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning,is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical conceptsas freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way—I believe I believe.”

“Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and blacken to the heart: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found The honey of peace in old poems.”

“This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow.”

“Poor little girl. Poor little girl,” Nan says, and at first I think she is speaking of the baby, perhaps it is a girl after all. But then I realize she is speaking of me, a girl of thirteen years, whose own mother has said that they can let her die as long as a son and heir is born.”

“Is Dust immortal then, I ask’d him, so that we may see it blowing through the Centuries? But as Walter gave no Answer I jested with him further to break his Melancholy humour: What is Dust, Master Pyne?And he reflected a little: It is particles of Matter, no doubt.Then we are all Dust indeed, are we not?And in a feigned Voice he murmered, For Dust thou art and shalt to Dust return. Then he made a Sour face, but only yo laugh the more.”

“history is what it is. it knows what it did.”

“Here dwell together still two men of noteWho never lived and so can never die:How very near they seem, yet how remoteThat age before the world went all awry.But still the game’s afoot for those with earsAttuned to catch the distant view-halloo:England is England yet, for all our fears–Only those things the heart believes are true.A yellow fog swirls past the window-paneAs night descends upon this fabled street:A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.Here, though the world explode, these two survive,And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”

“Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys.”

“Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.”

“I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.””Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?””How else? Though not till I’m done reading.”

“The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.”

“Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes… The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses… In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.”