For every empire history offers a hundred reasons why it fell, when what we need to know is why it lasted.
May 122023
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Mar 072023
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!
Feb 242023
What drives the proverbial cycle of good times and hard times? In part weakness and strength, mostly idleness and occupation.
Feb 232023
History has been written by the winners, as they were usually literate.
Nov 182022
Certain villains achieve martyrdom by the peculiar luck of being murdered by men still more villainous.
Sep 302022
The facts I remember are too good to check.
Sep 122022
As you grow old, you forget, and as you forget, you have to stop lying, or at least cut way down.
Sep 092022
Rogues, dunces, and newspapermen have long been with us, but the rogues are no longer charming, the dunces no longer amiable, and the newspapermen no longer raffish.
Aug 262022
We so often demand that the dead meet the standards of the living, and so rarely that the living meet the standards of the dead.
Aug 082022
Why speak ill of the dead? It’s the living who cause all the trouble.