#history

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#dating

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain. ↗

— Kate Morton

#history #life #names #people #spirits

Dates are convenient hooks on which we can hang our memories of events. But history is all about people - people like you and me who did things to change the world. ↗

— Joan Lowery Nixon

#events #history #memories #people #change

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#literature #writing #death

I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that’s how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I’ve had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now. That that’s how we find our way toward meaning. Meaning. If you’re going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots. ↗

— Franny Billingsley

#history #inevitabilities #inspiration #meaning #death

Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history. ↗

— James Joyce

#death #history #knives #murder #rome

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages. ↗

— Auguste Rodin

#belongs #by the people #eternal #form #history

Who we are takes generations to create and doesn’t end with death. ↗

— Stanley Siegel

#time #death

He recounted how, after the last of Charlemagne's forty-seven victorious campaigns, when he was returning from Saxony, a comet flashed across the sky and the Emperor's horse shied and threw him to the ground. The great Frankish Emperor had fallen so violently that his sword belt had been torn off him and the Spear, which he was clasping in his left hand, had been hurled some twenty feet away from him. At the same time there were earth tremors in the Royal Palace at Aachen, and the word "Princeps" had mysteriously faded from the red ochre inscription high up on a central beam in the Cathedral, which had formerly read 'Karolus Princeps.' Charlemagne himself had taken little notice of these portents, which his courtiers had taken to be a prophecy of his imminent death. In Einhard's own words: 'He refused to admit that any of these events could have any connection ith his own personal affairs.' Yet the 70-year-old Emperor drew up his last will and testament just in case these portents were correct. And they were! ↗

— Trevor Ravenscroft

#jesus-christ #nazism #the-occult #death

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance. ↗

— Kate Elliott

#history #design