Quotes
Quotes about Wit
A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand Must be as boisterously maintained as gained, And he that stands upon a slippery place Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck, Shone round him o'er the dead. . . . . The flames roll'd on--he would not go Without his Father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard.
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.
You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.
Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happyâcommon clay, if you likeâeating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the othersâthe noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.
What is a society without a heroic dimension?
Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroesâah, they have all the necessary leisure.
A hero is someone we can admire without apology.
What is a hero without love for mankind.
You know what rock musicians are? They are hung up, neurotic, over-weight hippies with sex problems.
Happy is the nation without a history.
And history with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page.
Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.
The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.
Wit is the lowest form of humor.
I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
A land without ruins is a land without memories--a land without memories is a land without history.
History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history.
History is an illogical record. It hinges on nothing. It is a story that changes, and has accidents, and recovers with scars.
History is the study of lies, anyway, because no witness ever recalls events with total accuracy, not even eyewitnesses.
May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.
Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
