To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMANModern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
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Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
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Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
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We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
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No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
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When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
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Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN