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.
BARBARA TUCHMANHuman beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN