#history

Even the juncture in history and the zeitgeist we live in is something we choose, setting the scene for the spiritual fodder we need to grow and achieve deeper elevation of our souls. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#deeper-elevation #elevation #freedom-of-choice #history #journey

She had always assumed that her life would end inside the war, that the war itself would be her eternal present, as it was for Darrow and for her brother. The possibility of time going on, her memories growing dim, the photographs of the battles turning from life into history terrified her. ↗

— Tatjana Soli

#war #life

This is the way history happens: it is measured out in days rather than epochs. ↗

— Charles Nicholl

#life

The longer a life, the challenge is not the distance between destinations, but the difficulty of travelling light. My soul’s a portmanteau packed full, one half filled with what was, the other with what is, what should be. ↗

— Jamie A. Hughes

#history #poem #life

History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#history #legends #on-fiction #nature

Sometimes you don’t choose greatness, it chooses you. And when it does, it requires a certain level of understandin', courage and a degree of blind hope. ↗

— Jay Grewal

#inspirational #motivational #spiritual #courage

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#nature

It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust. ↗

— Sebastian Barry

#truth #love

Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies.. ↗

— Jon Krakauer

#history #life #sence #death

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#history #religion #religion