Historians from Ireland

"Whence has come thy lasting power."

"The stately ship is seen no more, The fragile skiff attains the shore; And while the great and wise decay, And all their trophies pass away, Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme, Still floats above the wrecks of Time."

"Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion."

"The great difficulty of Christianity is that many of the Bible revelations seem to clash with our sense of justice and right."

"Among the intellectual phenomena of the present day, one of the most remarkable is certainly the presence among us of a small but able body of literary men, whose repugnance to modern liberal tendencies has led them to opinions on secular policy more fitted for the latitude of Russia than of England, and on religious policy more fitted for the Middle Ages than for the nineteenth century. The two things they hate the most are civil and religious liberty. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, representative government, the rights of nations to determine the form of government under which they will live, the rights of weak minorities to protection, as long as they do not injure their neighbours, the right of every man to profess the religious belief and adopt the religious worship which he considers the best, are in their phraseology mere cant or shams. The two fundamental principles of all constitutional government—that the will of the majority should rule, and that the scruples of the minority should be respected—are equally antipathetic to them. The whole tendency of modern policy in their eyes is a mistake, and history has to them a certain melancholy charm as a record of religious and political despotisms which have been weakly banished from the world."

"Nations seldom realise till too late how prominent a place a sound system of finance holds among the vital elements of national stability and well-being; how few political changes are worth purchasing by its sacrifice; how widely and seriously human happiness is affected by the downfall or the perturbation of national credit, or by excessive, injudicious, and unjust taxation."

"We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or Liberals."

"At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world. In each of these stages a standard is formed, different from that of the preceding stage, but in each case the same tendency is recognised as virtue."

"It is abundantly evident, both from history and from present experience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feeling of disgust, caused by the sight of the sufferings of men is not generically different from that which is caused by the sight of the sufferings of animals."

"The traditions that attached Greek philosophy to Egypt, the subsequent admiration for the schools of India to which Pyrrho and Anaxarchus are said to have resorted,350 the prevalence of Cynicism and Epicureanism, which agreed in inculcating indifference to political life, the complete decomposition of the popular national religions, and the incompatibility of a narrow local feeling with great knowledge and matured civilisation, were the intellectual causes of the change, and the movement of expansion received a great political stimulus when Alexander eclipsed the glories of Spartan and Athenian history by the vision of universal empire, accorded to the conquered nations the privileges of the conquerors, and created in Alexandria a great centre both of commercial intercourse and of philosophical eclecticism."

"There was a tradition that Pythagoras had himself penetrated to India, and learnt philosophy from the gymnosophists."

"There can indeed be little doubt that for nearly two hundred years after its establishment in Europe, the Christian community exhibited a moral purity which, if it has been equaled, has never for any long period been surpassed. Completely separated from the Roman world that was around them, abstaining alike from political life, from appeals to the tribunals, and from military occupations; looking forward continually to the immediate advent of their Master, and the destruction of the Empire in which they dwelt, and animated by all the fervor of a young religion, the Christiana found within themselves a whole order of ideas and feelings sufficiently powerful to guard them from the contamination of their age."

"Under these circumstances, there has arisen in society a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed, for the most part, to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every age as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man. Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."

"In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. We may look in vain for any period since Constantine, in which the clergy, as a body, exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war, with an energy at all comparable to that which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders, in producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses, in embittering the religious contests that followed the Reformation."

"There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled."

"Men continually forget that Happiness is a condition of Mind, and not a disposition of circumstances, and one of the most common of errors is that of confusing happiness with the means of happiness, sacrificing the first for the attainment of the second."

"Ambition is the luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation and distraction of the wretched..."

"The great art in politics consists not in hearing those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent."

"If ... we meet a man of acknowledged mental superiority, whether generally or in his special department, it is our social duty by intelligent questioning, by an anxiety to learn from him, to force him to condescend to our ignorance, or join in our fun, till his broader sympathies are awakened, and he plays with us as if we were children. Indeed this very metaphor points out one of the very remarkable instances of social equality asserted by an inferior—I mean the outspoken freedom of the child—which possesses a peculiar charm, and often thaws the dignity or dissipates the reserve of the great man and woman whose superiority is a perpetual obstacle to them in ordinary society."

"With Alexander the stage of Greek influence spread across the world."

"In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs."

"Napoleon’s troops fought in bright fields, where every helmet caught some gleams of glory; but the British soldier conquered under the cool shade of aristocracy. No honours awaited his daring, no despatch gave his name to the applauses of his countrymen; his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his death unnoticed."

"Not long after his (Justinian) accession, he reaffirmed the penalties which previous Emperors had enacted against the pagans, and forbade all donations or legacies for the purpose of maintaining "Hellenic impiety,"...by making the profession of (Christian) orthodoxy a necessary condition for public teaching Justinian accelerated the extinction of "Hellenism." ... This event had a curious sequel. Some of the philosophers whose occupation was gone resolved to cast the dust of the Christian Empire from their feet and migrate."

"Writing the history of the present is always a very different thing from writing the history of the distant past. The history of the distant past depends entirely on literary and documentary sources; the history of the present always involves unwritten material as well as documents. But the difference was much greater in the days of Thucydides than it is now."

"Polybius is not less express than Thucydides in asserting the principle that accurate representation of facts was the fundamental duty of the historian. He lays down that three things are requisite for performing such a task as his: the study and criticism of sources; autopsy, that is, personal knowledge of lands and places; and thirdly, political experience."

"The Achaeans of north Greece, which was later to be called Thessaly, seem to have been the great sea-adventurers of the heroic age. With this country were connected the memories of early Greek exploration of the Euxine, in the legend of the ship Argo. And to the Achaeans of Thessaly we must probably refer the earliest notice which preserves the Achaean name in a historical document. An Egyptian writing tells us that they came in company with other peoples "from the lands of the sea" and invaded Egypt in the year 1229 B.C., when Memptah was king. But the great achievement which made the Achaeans illustrious was one in which southern and northern Greece combined—the expedition against Troy."

"The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and the scanty remains of their language combine to testify."

"Most beliefs about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason."

"Some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter. I remember a conversation in which, when some disrespectful remark was made about hell, a loyal friend of that establishment said triumphantly, "But, absurd as it may seem, you cannot disprove it." If you were told that in a certain planet revolving around Sirius there is a race of donkeys who speak the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion."

"It has been said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. The Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression and an important condition of their freedom. Homer's poems were secular, not religious, and it may be noted that they are freer from immorality and savagery than sacred books that one could mention."

"Socrates was the greatest of the educationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though he was a poor man. His teachings always took the form of discussion; the discussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect of showing that some received opinion was untenable and the truth is difficult to ascertain."

"Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three of four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found ways to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not come up against impassable barriers? ...Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass."

"The doubts that Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered in Glasgow, have not, so far, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia."

"It is clear that in all these examples, which I have taken at random up and down the book, the writer is doing what we so continually find upon the part of academic authorities, particularly when they are indulging in an attack upon the Catholic Church—he is repeating what some other man of the same kind has said before him, and that other man is repeating something that was said before him. He has not been at the pains of consulting original authorities; and the result is valueless and inaccurate history, always wrong and sometimes the exact opposite of the truth."

"Skorzeny, who is now stateless, resides in Spain. I see no objection to granting a visa. Of course, if the Skorzenys come here there may be some adverse comment in the English popular press but I think we should be prepared to endure that with fortitude."

"There were other fellow-sufferers, lower-case ones: the thousands who were either killed, maimed or bereaved by the devotees of the Irish Republic in Mr Sands's organization, the Provisional IRA. Those other dead, however, being the wrong kind, are implicitly excluded from what is seen as a celestial tête-à-tête."

"I expected a lot of negative reactions to my critique of aspects of Irish nationalism, and I got a fiercely negative set of reactions of course from sympathisers with Sinn Féin and the IRA, that is to say, people who are so nationalist they were prepared to kill for nationalist objectives."

"We taught our young people hatred of England. We taught them that the Six Counties were rightfully ours: that is, that they should be ruled by Catholics."

"Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift is more Irish than Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English."

"Of history and its consequences it may be said: "Those who can, gloat; those who can't, brood." Englishmen are born gloaters; Irishmen born brooders."

"Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation."

"If I saw Mr. Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart – politically speaking – I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case."

"The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down."

"I think many non-Jews don't realise the tremendous emotional heat that is involved here in the second half of the twentieth century. A heat that derives from the Holocaust. That is to say the destruction, the mass murder of the Jews in Eastern Europe where most of the Jews were. That both the Israelis and the Jews of the United States are the bereaved children of that population who were murdered. And the bond between the Jews of the United States and the people of Israel has the emotional intensity derived from that common bereavement. And that is what gives. I do understand that people resent the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country [the US], but that power derives from that elemental basic bond of the common bereavement and the horror that is there in the background. Therefore, Jews in the United States do react strongly – and that's what makes this a very powerful lobby, and it is – they do react strongly to anything that seems to them to threaten the connection of the United States in Israel, which is Israel's lifeline. They see this as threatening. This may be an exaggerated fear, but always there is the shadow there of a possible new Holocaust. Israel overrun. The people of Israel massacred again."

"The planets revolved in circles because it was in their nature to do so, just as laudanum sends to sleep because it possesses a virtus dormitiva."

"Is it not reasonable to think that by far the greater part is solid and dark, and that this immense globe is encompassed with a thin covering of that resplendent substance from which the sun would seem to derive the whole of his vivifying heat and energy?"

"Thus, not merely what it can do, but the rate at which it can do it, has to be considered in estimating the value of photography as an ally in astronomy."

"Comets encountering these precincts must be perplexed to decide between the two potentates claiming their allegiance, and perhaps on occasions pay their court to each in turns, throwing out tails, as they do so, in all sorts of anomalous and contradictory directions."

"At the foot of the cross, in all humility and in all adoration, we have learned at once the depth and the height of human nature; we have learned to think all wisdom but foolishness for the knowledge of Christ; all purity but sin, unwashed by His atonement; all hope in earth, of all hopes the most miserable, but in the faith of His most blessed resurrection; content to bear the struggles of life, at His command; and submitting to the grave, with a consciousness that it can sting no more."

"Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh; Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear; To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer."

"Now manhood and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror. I blaze thee captayne first from Troy cittye repairing, Lyke wandring pilgrim too famosed Italie trudging, And coast of Lavyn: soust wyth tempestuus hurlwynd, On land and sayling, bi Gods predestinat order: But chiefe through Junoes long fostred deadlye revengment. Martyred in battayls, ere towne could statelye be buylded, Or Gods theare setled: thence flitted thee Latin ofspring, Thee mote of old Alban: thence was Rome peereles inhaunced. My muse shew the reason, what grudge or what furye kendled Of Gods thee Princesse, through so cursd mischevus hatred, Wyth sharp sundrye perils too tugge so famus a captayne. Such festred rancoure doo Sayncts celestial harbour? A long buylt citty theare stood, Carthago so named, From the mouth of Tybris, from land eke of Italye seaverd, Possest wyth Tyrians, in streingh and ritches abounding. Theare Juno, thee Princes her Empyre wholye reposed, Her Samos owtcasting, heere shee dyd her armonye settle, And warlick chariots, heere chiefly her joylitye raigned. This towne shee labored too make thee gorgeus empresse, Of towns and regions, her drift yf destenye furthred. But this her hole meaning a southsayd mysterie letted That from thee Troians should branch a lineal ofspring, Which would thee Tyrian turrets quite batter a sunder, And Libye land likewise wyth warlick victorye conquoure."

"Wee leave Creete Country; and our sayls unwrapped uphoysing, With woodden vessel thee rough seas deepelye we furrowe. When we fro land harbours too mayne seas gyddye dyd enter Voyded of al coast sight with wild fluds roundly bebayed, A watrye clowd gloomming, ful above mee clampred, apeered, A sharp storme menacing, from sight beams soonye rejecting: Thee flaws with rumbling, thee wroght fluds angrye doe jumble: Up swel thee surges, in chauffe sea plasshye we tumble: With the rayn, is daylight through darcknesse mostye bewrapped, And thundring lightbolts from torneclowds fyrye be flasshing. Wee doe mis oure passadge through fel fluds boysterus erring, Oure pilot eke, Palinure, through dymnesse clowdye bedusked In poinccts of coompasse dooth stray with palpabil erroure. Three dayes in darcknesse from bright beams soony repealed, And three nights parted from lightning starrye we wandered, The fourth day foloing thee shoare, neere setled, apeered And hils uppeaking; and smoak swift steamed to the skyward. Oure sayls are strucken, we roa Furth with speedines hastye, And the sea by our mariners with the oars cleene canted is harrowd On shoars of strophades from storme escaped I landed, For those plats Strophades in languadge Greekish ar highted, With the sea coucht Islands. Where foule bird foggye Celaeno And Harpy is nestled: sence franckling Phines his housroume From theym was sunderd, and fragments plentye remooved. No plage more perilous, no monster grislye more ouglye, No stigian vengaunce lyke too theese carmoran haggards. Theese fouls lyke maydens are pynde with phisnomye palish; With ramd cramd garbadge, thire gorges draftye be gulled, With tallants prowling, theire face wan withred in hunger, With famin upsoaken."

"Scant had he thus spoken: when that from mountenus hil toppe Al wee see the giaunt, with his hole flock lowbylyke hagling. Namde the shepeherd Polyphem, to the wel knowne sea syd aproching. A fowle fog monster, great swad, deprived of eyesight: His fists and stalcking are propt with trunck of a pynetree. His flock him doe folow, this charge him chieflye rejoyceth. In grief al his coomfort on neck his whistle is hanged. When that to the seasyde the swayne Longolius hobbled, Hee rinst in the water the drosse from his late bored eyelyd. His tusk grimly gnashing, in seas far waltred, he groyleth; Scantly doo the water surmounting reache to the shoulders. But we being feared, from that coast hastly remooved, And with us embarcked the Greekish suitur, as amply His due request merited, wee chopt off softly the cables. Swift wee sweepe the sea froth with nimble lustilad oare striefe. The noise he perceaved then he turning warily lifteth. But when he consider’d that wee prevented his handling, And that from foloing our ships the fluds hye revockt him, Loud the lowbie brayed with belling monsterous eccho; The water hee shaketh, with his out cryes Italie trembleth, And with a thick thundring the fyerde forge Aetna rebounded. Then runs from mountayns and woods the rowncival helswarme Of Cyclopan lurdens to the shoars in coompanie clustring. Far we se them distaunt, us grimly and vainely beholding. Up to the sky reatching, the breetherne swish swash of Aetna. A folck moaste fulsoom, for sight most fitlye resembling Trees of loftye cipers, with thickned multitud oak rowes; Or Joves great forest, or woods of mightye Diana. Feare thear us enforced with forcing speediness headlong To swap off our cables, and fal to the seas at aventure."

"A wind fane changabil huf puffe Always is a woomman."

"The real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished. Revealing important information about the Yemen war – in which at least 70,000 people have been killed – is the reason why the US government is persecuting both Assange and Zikry."

"I was in Kabul a decade ago when WikiLeaks released a massive tranche of US government documents about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On the day of the release, I was arranging by phone to meet an American official... He was intensely interested and asked me what was known about the degree of classification of the files. When I told him, he said in a relieved tone: “No real secrets, then.” ...I asked him why he was so dismissive of the revelations that were causing such uproar in the world. He explained that the US government was not so naive that it did not realise that making these documents available to such a wide range of civilian and military officials meant that they were likely to leak. Any information really damaging to US security had been weeded out... he said: “We are not going to learn the biggest secrets from WikiLeaks because these have already been leaked by the White House, Pentagon or State Department.” ...However, it was the friendly US official and I who were being naive, forgetting that the real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished."

"It is unlikely that Iran is involved – but the unpredictability of US and Saudi foreign policy has exacerbated the danger of military action... Saudi Arabia’s claim that two of its oil tankers have been sabotaged off the coast of the UAE is vague in detail – but could create a crisis that spins out of control and into military action... Although the US is militarily superior to Iran by a wide margin, the Iranians as a last resort could fire rockets or otherwise attack Saudi and UAE oil facilities. Such apocalyptic events are unlikely – but powerful figures in Washington, such as the national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, appear prepared to take the risk of a war breaking out... Bolton and Pompeo are reported to have used some mortar rounds landing near the US embassy in Baghdad in February as an excuse to get a reluctant Pentagon to prepare a list of military options against Iran... the US and Saudi Arabia have been talking up war against Iran just as economic sanctions are seriously biting. Iranian oil exports have dropped from 2.8 to 1.3 million barrels a day... Promises by the EU, UK, France and Germany to enable the Islamic republic to avoid sanctions on its oil trade and banking have not been fulfilled. Commercial enterprises are too frightened of being targeted by the US treasury to risk breaching sanctions."

"He has been accused of shifting the agenda from the two-state solution to promising the annexation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank during the present election campaign. But the so-called two-state solution was always something of a charade enabling foreign diplomats to pretend that there was a “peace process” that was dead and buried. Likewise, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and the US recognition of the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights do not really change a balance of power that is wholly in Israel’s favour... On the other hand, the Palestinians will still be there in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank; Israel never achieves a final victory. Netanyahu has done nothing to change this – but then neither did previous Israeli leaders, whatever they claimed they were doing."

"It’s horrific...famines are pretty uncommon... famine like this, as big as this, this is very uncommon... it’s entirely man made... the news of it isn’t being reported... The economy’s being destroyed... food that is available is too expensive for much of the population. ...bombing started in the spring of 2015... led by Saudi Arabia, and particularly was the initiative of the Crown Prince, but at that stage he was defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, who has become so notorious since because of the Khashoggi murder... Originally... apparently they thought it would take a few weeks. By the end of 2016... they appear to have become more and more frustrated. So they had started [attacking] infrastructure, food production, food storage... 220 fishing boats on the Red Sea... destroyed. The fish catch is down by 50 percent... means a lot for people who are already on the age of starvation. And the attack on the economic infrastructure... All the evidence is that there is a very deliberate economic war going on, directed at the Yemenis... So all these things are coming together with this intensifying of the military war, and heavy civilian casualties, and the worsening famine in all parts of the country."

"It is a strange thing to me, that wise men should make such large discourses of the catholic Church, and bring so many testimonies to prove the universality of it, and not discern, that, while by this means they think they have gotten a great victory over us, they have in very truth overthrown themselves."

"They who talk so much of the catholic Church, but indeed stand for their own particular, must of force sink as low in uncharitableness, as they have thrust themselves deep in schism. We who talk less of the universality of the Church, but hold the truth of it, cannot find in our hearts to pass such a bloody sentence upon so many poor souls that have given their names to Christ."

"He, whose pleasure it was to spread the Church’s seed so far, said to east, west, north, and south, “Give”; it is not for us then to say, “Keep back.” He hath given to his Son “the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession.” We for our parts dare not abridge this grant, and limit this great lordship, as we conceive it may best fit our own turns, but leave it to his own latitude, and seek for the catholic Church neither in this part, nor in that piece, but, as it hath been before said in the words of the Apostle, among “all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours."

"Contention arises either through error in men's judgments or else disorder in their affections. When contention does grow by error in judgment, it ceases not till men by instruction come to see wherein they err, and what it is that did deceive them; without this there is neither notice nor punishment that can establish peace in the Church."

"The ground of episcopacy is derived partly from the pattern prescribed by God in the Old Testament, and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the apostles, and confirmed by Christ himself in the time of the New. The government of the Church of the Old Testament was committed to the priests and Levites, unto whom the ministers of the New do now succeed; in like sort as our Lord’s Day hath done unto their Sabbath, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, touching the vocation of the Gentiles, “I will take of them for priests, and for Levites, saith the Lord.”"

"If it may now answer the expectation of many pious, and prudent persons, who have desired the publishing of it, as a seasonable preparative to some moderation in the midst of those extremes, which this age abounds with, it will attain the end intended by the author; and it is likely to be more operative, by the great reputation he had, and hath in the hearts of all good men, being far from the least suspicion to be biased by any private ends, but only aiming at the reducing of order, peace, and unity, which God is the author of, and not of confusion."

"It was an astounding discovery that Hindustan possessed, in spite of the changes of realms and chances of time, a language of umivalled richness and variety; a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical- the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength. A philosophy, compared with which, in point of age, the lessons of Pythagoras are but of yesterday, and in point of daring speculation Plato's boldest efforts are tame and commonplace. Poetry more purelyintellectual than any of those, which we had before any conception; and systems of science whose antiquity baffled all power of astronomical calculation. This literature, with all its colossal proportions, which can scarcely be described without the semblance of bombast and exaggeration claimed of course a place for itself - it stood alone, and it was able to stand alone." "To acquire the mastery of this language is almost the labor of life; its literature seems exhaustless. The utmost stretch of imaginatlOn can scarcely comprehend its boundless mythology. Its philosophy has touched upon every metaphysical difficulty; its legislation is as varied as the castes for which it was designed."

"His parting shot is that “in the post 2011 period it became clear that the country needed a party with the basic principles of the PDs”. Nothing could be further from the truth."

"Marian devotion is very deeply embedded in Ultramontane papalist Catholicism, and has been for centuries. The Virgin in the nineteenth century, apparitions of the Virgin, play an enormous part in focusing Catholic loyalty, Catholic identity, and also in offering a dimension of Christianity... If you've got a very rigid, hierarchical, masculinely-dominated form of Christianity, the tender, nurturing, feminine element in Christianity can only be rescued by some sort of balancing act. This I think was an enormous strength in nineteenth century Catholicism over and against say nineteenth century Fundamentalist Evangelicalism - with which it has a great deal in common in some respects - but where I think it has an edge is in this feminine dimension."

"The reason the Pope is the Pope is that he is the custodian of the relics of St Peter."

"I do not think there is a Christian shape to history in the sense that things move according to God's plan in any discernible way. I think a Christian approaches history with a sense that human life matters and has meaning and that it is both possible and important to tell the truth. Perhaps that constitutes a Christian approach to history because none of those things can be taken for granted now, even among people practicing history. There are people who practice history who think that it is a branch of the creative arts in the sense that we impose patterns on the past. I believe that we discover patterns in the past."

"Duffy's aim is to redress an old historiographical imbalance. He has admirably succeeded in this, even if at the cost of another imbalance. This is, as it stands, a very illuminating and satisfying book, which takes a major step towards better understanding of the English Reformation."

"The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at Cambridge and a former president of Magdalene College, is the most important study of our time in the field of early modern English religious history. It has completely changed our view of the reception of Protestant theology under the Tudors."

"Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars takes its place besides A. G. Dickens' The English Reformation as a landmark book in the history of the Reformation, and with this book the author assumes commanding rank in the revisionist camp."

"The most beautiful history book of the year is Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers, 1240–1570... Eamon Duffy examines surviving copies of the Book of Hours, the most intimate book of the late Middle Ages, tracing the marks left by readers — everything from laundry lists scribbled in the margins to personalised versions of prayers. This richly illustrated book takes us back into the hearts and souls of the English long ago."

"The «Hellenes» amaze us because, although open to the spiritual disturbances of their age, they turned to ancient methods to find a solution to the anxieties of the present. Their placid faith in a tradition stemming from Plato and continually evolving was perhaps the most reassuring aspect of late ancient civilization. In fact, many classical and enlightened societies had collapsed under the weight of their own traditionalism, leaving immediate successors only a memory of anxieties and nightmares. If this did not happen in the Roman Empire, it was largely due to the "Hellenic Renaissance" and the dialogue between its proponents and the new Christian aristocratic intellectuals. (Part 1, chapter II, pp. 56-57)"

"Plotinus he had attempted to deepen his knowledge of the exotic philosophy of the Persians and Indians. Only later in life did he indulge, with ever greater tranquility, in Plato's ancient dialectics. The appeal of his writings comes from being the work of a troubled and anxious man who found his way through harsh, rational discipline and achieved calm and clarity in adulthood. (Part 1, chapter II, p. 57)"

"Having supported the relationship between the visible and the invisible, between the inexpressible internal world and its significant manifestation in the external world, having asserted that the soul was able to give meaning to natural things: this was the service rendered by Plotinus to his contemporaries and successors. (Part One, chapter II, p. 59)"

"[...] the model of Charlemagne's renewed Roman empire was not Augustus, but Justinian, the devout Catholic depicted in the mosaics of San Vitale. Justinian was the direct, if inadvertent, ancestor of the idea that a "Christian republic", a Holy Roman Empire, would always exist in Western Europe to serve the interests of the papacy and to ensure the libertas of the Catholic church . (Part 2, chapter I, p. 108)"

"800 miles south of the Byzantine frontier, in Mecca, a city of the Hejaz, a middle-aged man, after a mediocre career as a merchant, began wandering disconsolately among the sinister hills outside the city. In C.E.610, this man, Muhammad, began to have visions. He narrated these visions in metrical form and constituted his Qur'an, "recitation". Strengthened by these experiences he gathered a community around himself: the Umma, the "people of Allah". Within twenty years Muhammad and his Umma had established themselves as rulers of Mecca and nearby Medina, and as the main party of the Arabian Peninsula. (Part 2, chapter III, p. 155)"

"We Europeans have guiltily built the fracture between Europe and Islam, while instead the roots of these two worlds have been intertwined for a millennium."

"We must candidly admit that we have created a 'dark age' to feel superior to the past."

"The "golden age" is the exception, normal history is "grey"."

"Benedict XVI is right when he says that the West has "become Christian". The equation "Christian=Western", historically, is blasphemy."

"Peter Brown, The Late Antique World. (The World of Late Antiquity. From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad), translation by Maria Vittoria Malvano, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Turin, C.E.1974. ISBN 88-06- 38901-7"

"He was a man of the most thorough loyalty to his country and to his order, of extensive learning, free from all desire for personal aggrandisement, and of an unlimited benevolence."

"The fatalities which destroyed the men of another period originated in crafty diplomacy, soothing promises, and flattering expediency. Heaven guard us against a recurrence of similar evils! Unity and untiring exertion are our only means of establishing our legislative independence."