War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and (as a poet has said) "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are companions , teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.