Books are humanity in print.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.