Historical Quotes

You have a spine of steel and fire in your eyes, Rosalie. To have such a quality, one must be shaken to the foundation of one’s soul and put back together. I want to know how you emerged from hell made of steel and fire.

~ Moriah Densley

Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were really there.

~ Tom Hays

Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the living was easier – here or there. The one thing he might want to ask God for was to let him go home. But they wouldn't let him go home.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

My very core clenches and spasms, my hips with a mind of their own, lurch. It is as if I no longer have control of any part of my body. ‘Ugh,’ I continue to groan in relief. And then, slowly, the rush is over and I am able to part my eyelids again. David is still looking at my face, a light sheen of sweat on his brow indicates that his task was not without effort. Finding his gaze too forthright in the currentcircumstances, my eyes move to the arm that still dwells beneath my skirts and thehand that clings viciously to his sleeve. My hand.

~ Ayana Prende

Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war)

~ Max Hastings

Paying twenty-five dollars for me was your mistake, ma’am. I’m not worth more than fifteen.

~ Margaret Brownley

When Death has a story to tell, you listen.

~ #Name?

I’m all alone against the darkness. Dark winds rising against me.

~ Mark Noce

I’m not only my father’s daughter, but also a daughter of the nation he founded. And protecting both is what I’ve always done.

~ Laura Kamoie

Sons of a revolution fight for liberty. They give blood, flesh, limbs, their very lives. But daughters . . . we sacrifice our eternal souls.

~ Laura Kamoie

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven’s gate.

~ Ned Hayes

Stars flicker above, points of bright ice in a dark river. I pull a heavy sheepskin around my legs and stretch my feet toward the fire. Despite the cold, Liam plays his flute, the sound whistling through the night. Soon my eyes are heavy, my head nodding.I open my eyes at the deep melodious baritone of Salvius’s voice telling a tale. Liam’s flute is silent now. I have heard Salvius tell many tales on market days; he is known for his memory of wandering minstrels and mummers who visit us at Whitsunday and through Midsummer. Salvius is a mockingbird: he can give a fair charade of the rhythmic tones of any wandering bard or any noble of the Royal Court.In this darkness, his eyes catch the light like a cat in the night.

~ Ned Hayes

His legs may have been firmly rooted to the study floor, but his heart had just leaped the stile and was running down the lane.

~ Victoria Sue

Their love was so forbidden that their very touch could wrap a hangman's noose around them.

~ Victoria Sue

I was torn apart. But you, my knight, you found all the pieces and put me back together.

~ Juliette Cross

Humans were made for love and beauty, their vulnerability was what made them feel on the deepest level and what could also crush their will to live.

~ Juliette Cross

When we are reading, a voice comes to us as in the dark and whispers, Imagine! Samuel Beckettas told by Bill Moyer in the Foreword he wrote for, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. Afterword by Ann Patchett

~ Samuel Beckett

The English language [during the Elizabethan era] wasn't standardized. There were no official dictionaries. There was no cultural belief that words should always be spelled the same way. So people spelled things however they heard them or however made sense. I mean the name Shakespeare had something like 16 different spellings, and the way he spelled it isn't the way we spell it.- School of Night - pg 44

~ Bayard Louis

All the while Martin attempted to catch his aunt with a remorseful gaze, but the young woman was reabsorbed into her mother’s orbit, and though Anna embraced him, pressed on him the importance of visiting soon, he could feel that she was already very far away, not really seeing him, but cruising with distant eyes and a feather’s touch over the summits of all her disappointments.

~ Carola Perla

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

~ Sara Sheridan

Once upon a time, there was a civilization in the eastern side of the world. It was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet that existed during that time.This civilization was the glorious Indus valley civilization. No, I am not talking about India. I am talking about the land of greatness that got lost in time. Today, in the same geographical location of that great civilization, we have a piece of earth, which is known as “India”. But do not mistake it to be the same glorious land that existed thousands of years ago, along with other magnificent civilizations, such as the Greeks, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians etc.

~ Abhijit Naskar

I am in complete alignment with my thinking with this statement by F. F. Bruce: 'Whether our approach is theological or historical, it does matter whether the New Testament documents are reliable or not'. ~R. Alan Woods [2013]

~ R. Alan Woods

You dare quarrel with me Doerwyne?She wrinkled her nose. It's not quarreling to express an opinion'Women don't have opinions.Then I must be a man, because I have plenty.

~ Georgia Fox

Mechanically I carried on across the Irish Sea, noticing with a jaundiced eye that it had suddenly lost the sinister threat of no-man's-land and was transformed into a placid highway where ferry-steamers would soon chug peacefully over the unmarked graves of gallant seamen.

~ Jackie Moggridge

We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.

~ Daisaku Ikeda

It's a very good historical book about history.

~ Dan Quayle

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

~ Martin Heidegger

Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design.

~ Kevin Kelly

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

~ Paul Ricœur