Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.
I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.
There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.
The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.
And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.
In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.
I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like.
There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans
Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.
He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.
The preparations were elaborate and mammoth in scale, and Washington threw himself into the effort, demanding that not an hour be lost.
...Had proven himself a leader of remarkable ability, a man not only of enterprising ideas, but with the staying power to carry them out.
Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life.
It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required - learn vitally anything - by the close study of books.
Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.
The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?
In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.
When I'm reading for my own pleasure, I read things other than history or archival material. I read a lot of fiction. I'm very fond of mysteries.
If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.
History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had been different.
You can't love what you don't know much about. You can't convince, stimulate, hold the attention, teach, if you don't know what you're talking about.
The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.
You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture. You've got to become them." (Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)
The truth isn't just the facts. You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth, just as you can have facts missing or some wrong, and reach the larger truth.
I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement... To do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.
I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.
Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.
We must not think of learning as only what happens in schools. It is an extended part of life. The most readily available resource for all of life is our public library system.
Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision.
People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.
America faces an enemy who believes in enforced ignorance. And all that we stand for is the open mind, the generous spirit, the ideal of tolerance, freedom, education, opportunity.
Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.
To shut yourself from history is to shut yourself off from say music or painting or the theatre, literature for the rest of your life. It would be to cheat yourself of the pleasures of life.
How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?
My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.
When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
Real success is finding your life work in the work that you love. That's it. Don't worry about making a living, don't worry about popularity or fame. Make what you do ... count more than what you own.
I write on the typewriter. I like it because I like the feeling of making something with my hands. I like pressing the key and a letter comes up and is printed on a piece of paper. I can understand that.
I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I will never live long enough to do the work I want to do: the books I would like to write, the ideas I would like to explore.
I think it's important to remember that these men are not perfect. If they were marble gods, what they did wouldn't be so admirable. The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.
To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?
Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better.
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
I think it's best to pick a biographical subject who lives to a ripe old age. Older people tend to relax and speak their minds. They're dropping some of the masks that they've been wearing. There's a candor.