“Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.”

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.

Books are humanity in print.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.

In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

To explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.

The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.

I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is.

In an attempt to make things easier for myself, which is the basis for all of history’s worst decisions […].

The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.

It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.

It’s easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.