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To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Barbara Tuchman

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Knighthood Love War
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Revolution Successful Tyrants
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

Art Church Little
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Science Sea Teacher
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disaster Facts Records
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Fighting History Police
For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

People Reform relief
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Desire Women Worry
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

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

Government Periods Pursuit
For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Purpose Technology Use
Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Development Impossible
satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Exaggeration Reality Satire
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Sea War
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Different Eye Honor

To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

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To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

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