“Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.”

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.

I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard

Completeness is rare in history.

That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.

The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.

Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.