Wounded honor provoked duels; wounded feelings provoke lawsuits.
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
We repeat history because we cannot reverse it.
This is not the end of history. It is not even the beginning of the end of history. But it is, perhaps, the end of the end of history.
Nearly everything in history nearly didn’t happen.
The history of Western art would be entirely different if, 500 years ago, we had known that the Greeks painted their sculpture.
For every empire history offers a hundred reasons why it fell, when what we need to know is why it lasted.
The East, the West, the classical and Christian, the medieval and modern, the peasantry, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the 18th, 19th, 20th century — what intellectual malfeasance shelters under the definite article!
What drives the proverbial cycle of good times and hard times? In part weakness and strength, mostly idleness and occupation.
History has been written by the winners, as they were usually literate.
Certain villains achieve martyrdom by the peculiar luck of being murdered by men still more villainous.