“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”

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.

I do not stick to rules when cooking. I rely on my imagination.

Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess.

I am a guilty party here – to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.

There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend

Yes, of course. I was on her like, um… I believe that old woman last week we took after she’d burnt down her house cooking said ‘like white on rice.

Is cooking an art ? Is talking an art ? Is even painting an art ? It is artfulness that makes art, not the medium itself. Of course photography is an art – when it is in the hands of artists.”

My biggest challenge is cooking traditional French dishes, which usually require very specific techniques and methods. That’s just not my style… I cook from the soul.

Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking.