Despised as ineffective, they were ineffective because they were despised.
Cornwallis was a man who could have thrust his hand in a flame if necessary, but not a man to organize the logistics and arrangements of a large campaign with a likely risk of failure. The smooth face...
Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.
Virtue without power, as a speaker had said at the Council of Basle half a century earlier, will only be mocked, and that the Roman Pope without the patrimony of the Church would be a mere slave of Ki...
The irony of man’s fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life,...
The Archimedean point where the lever can be applied. At
When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
When Latimer demanded to know by whom and by what authority he was being indicted, Sir Peter de la Mare supplied the historic answer that the Commons as a body would maintain all their charges in comm...
What the Ambassador was witnessing—in idea, if not yet in fact—was the transfer of power from its arbitrary exercise by nobles and monarchs to power stationed in a constitution and in representation o...
To establish despotism over such a mighty nation must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat: let us retreat when we can, not when we must.
There was an aura about 1914 that caused those who sensed it to shiver for mankind. Tears came even to the most bold and resolute.
The origin of war, according to its 14th century codifier Honoré Bonet, lay in Lucifer’s war against God,
TO BE THE SEWER OF CHRISTENDOM and drain all the discords out of it was the primary function of the Crusades,
THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS WERE EMPTY, shop fronts were shuttered, buses, trams, cars, and horse cabs had disappeared. In their place flocks of sheep were herded across the Place de la Concorde on their wa...
One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was the only book which allowed him to forget politics.
In any case, leaping trade with the Allies, which was taking up more than the slack of lost trade with Germany, dulled the edge of national principle. As long as goods were being absorbed, the United...
In a long and fiercely argued process, against the strenuous resistance of the peers, he ordered the Sire de Coucy to stand trial. Enguerrand IV was convicted, and although the King intended a death s...
In Brussels the leaves had begun to fall, and a sudden wind blew them in gusts about the street. People felt the hidden chill of autumn in the air and wondered what would happen if the war were to las...
History never repeats itself, said Voltaire; man always does. Thucydides,
Fear of God is thrown away, lamented Brigitta in Rome, and in its place is a bottomless bag of money. All the Ten Commandments, she said, had been reduced to one: Bring hither the money.