“The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.”

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.

To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.

To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced

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.

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own.

The object of education is not to fill a man’s mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.

The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.