Quotes about History

I think the idea of crazy goalkeepers is an old thing, really.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Before Turner there was no fog in London.

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the medium of Art, and Art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.

Here is a method that deserves a whole chapter. Read history! Try to get the viewpoint of ten thousand years—and see how trivial YOUR troubles are, in terms of eternity!

He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life. Let us now hear his teachings on who has the good life, on who is among the truly blessed.

Yet today, from countless paintings, statues, and buildings, from literature and history, from personality and institution, from profanity, popular song, and entertainment media, from confession and controversy, from legend and ritual—Jesus stands quietly at the center of the contemporary world, as he himself predicted. He so graced the ugly instrument on which he died that the cross has become the most widely exhibited and recognized symbol on earth.

God has made himself known by personally approaching human beings and involving himself in their lives. The history is there for all who wish to see. But no one has to see—now. That is how the divine conspiracy works. With this God in view, the prophetic witness relentlessly speaks, with absolute assurance, of "the times of the restitution of all things" (Acts 3:21).