“ By the mid-seventeenth century, the visible image has assumed far greater reality than the invisible thought. Thomas Cahill
“ Is is seldom possible to say of the medievals that they *always* did one thing and *never* another; they were marvelously inconsistent. Thomas Cahill
“ Like the Jews before them, the Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. Thomas Cahill
“ We followed the rump of a misguiding woman. It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed. Thomas Cahill
“ We need not fear God as we fear all other suffering, which burns and maims and kills. For God's fire, though it will perfect us, will not destroy, for 'the bush was not consumed. Thomas Cahill
“ Well, they may not be civilized, but they certainly are confident—and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature. Thomas Cahill
“ The Irish innovation was to make all confession a completely private affair between penitent and priest - and to make it as repeatable as necessary. (In fact, repetition was encouraged on the theory t… Thomas Cahill
“ As we shall see, these depictions of divine wrath will eventually give way to a purer understanding of God, but at this moment we have a snapshot of monotheism in its tadpole stage. Thomas Cahill
“ The citizens of the City of Rome, therefore, could not believe it when toward the end of the first decade of the fifth century, they woke to find Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and all his forces park… Thomas Cahill
“ In the words of Paul Johnson: The Temple, now, in Herod’s1 version, rising triumphantly over Jerusalem, was an ocular reminder that Judaism was about Jews and their history—not about anyone else. Othe… Thomas Cahill
“ Despairing Dido, queen of ancient Carthage, slain by her own hand as her magnificent lover Aeneas lifts anchor and sails away forever: this is one of the most haunting and permanent images of the clas… Thomas Cahill
“ Well, they may not be civilized, but they are certainly confident--and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature. Thomas Cahill
“ To the Greek mind, the unwillingness to compromise in religious matters—which were not all that important, anyway—was impious, unpatriotic, maybe even seditious. For the Jews, religion was the Way of… Thomas Cahill
“ This is a game that has been played over and over—in fact, for twenty-four centuries—before audiences of almost infinite variety. At some point long ago, the game became a doubles match, for the two G… Thomas Cahill
“ It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always askin… Thomas Cahill
“ Within his lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade came to a halt, and other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal warfare, decreased. In reforming Irish sexual mores, he w… Thomas Cahill
“ Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their e… Thomas Cahill
“ Since time is no longer cyclical but one-way and irreversible, personal history is now possible and an individual life can have value. Thomas Cahill
