"Vansina had a truly wonderful gift of making all his students feel like they could do anything. He seemed to know everything, literally beyond our collective comprehension, except for one blind spot: our limitations."

"The ideal Dominican life was rich in the multiplicity and choice of its elements, and was thoroughly unified by its well-considered principles and enactments; but it was none the less complex, and its full realization was difficult."

"The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, if I may so call it, where one finds the genius of two races — the Romance and the Germanic — mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively Belgian. It is in that very receptivity — the fact that it has absorbed and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization — that the originality of the Belgian national culture resides."

"The unification of all branches of study is advantageous in the way of contact and co-operation; and while each of the various branches preserves its autonomy, the work of the university as a whole is also very fruitful."

"The history of mankind may have as many divisions as human life has aspects or sides. Its noblest form is the history of religion, as it developed in the past among the different groups of the human race. Reason shows that there can be only one true religion, based on the true knowledge and the proper worship of the one God. Thanks to the light of revelation we know that this one true religion is the Christian religion, and, since there are different forms of the Christian religion, that the true religion is in particular the one known as Catholic, concrete and visible in the Catholic Church. The history of Christianity, therefore, or more properly the history of the Catholic Church, is the most important and edifying part of the history of religion."

"Of the 3rd millennium BC , Marc van de Mieroop confessed ‘the chronology is confused owing to the Sumerian king list’s practice of listing contemporaneous dynasties as successive.’"

"The most successful work of the Belgian Church as been done in the field of education, in spite of most violent opposition."

"The problem of the public peace which was the great desideratum of the Middle Ages was not solved at one stroke, but at least the impetus was given."

"As a matter of fact, a minority can transform a people when it wishes to dominate it effectively, when it has only contempt for it, regarding it as fit only for exploitation; as was the case with the Normans in England, the Musulmans wherever they appeared, and even the Romans in the conquered provinces. But the Germans wishes neither to destroy nor to exploit the empire. Far from despising it, they admired it. They did not confront it with any superior moral strength. Their heroic period ended with their settlement."

"Once seen, Pirenne could not be forgotten. He looked like, and indeed was, one of those big, vivacious burghers whom the Flemish artists of the seventeenth century liked to paint. His face in repose was somewhat heavy; the features did not quite fit their setting of trim beard and hair brushed smoothly back from his forehead. But when his interest was aroused and he began to talk, any impressions of this kind were forgotten. He was a most exuberant man and seemed to put all his strength into whatever he said or did. He could be overwhelming, though without intention; he was never overbearing, and one never felt the least frightened of him. It would not be surprising to learn that he had enemies or ruffled the feelings of the susceptible, but he was essentially kind-hearted, friendly, generous. His strength and vitality, not design, made him redoubtable; but he was single-minded, and never tried to be impressive. His services to Belgium and his unpleasant experiences during the war had made him, so to speak, a chartered freeman of his country."

"The expansion of Islam was thus unable to absorb the whole of the Mediterranean. It encircled the Mediterranean on the East, the South, and the West, but it was unable to obtain a hold upon the North. The ancient Roman sea had become the frontier between Islam and Christianity. All the old Mediterranean provinces conquered by the Musulmans gravitated henceforth toward Baghdad. At the same time the Orient was cut off from the Occident. The bond which the Germanic invasion had left intact was severed. Byzantium was henceforth merely the centre of a Greek Empire which could no longer pursue Justinian's policy. It was reduced to defending its last possessions. Its farthest Western outposts were Naples, Venice, Gaeta and Amalfi. The fleet still enabled it to remain in touch with them, and thus prevented the Eastern Mediterranean from becoming a Musulman lake. But the Western Mediterranean was precisely that. Once the great means of communication, it was now an insuperable barrier. Islam had shattered the Mediterranean unity which the Germanic invasions had left intact. This was the most essential event of European history which had occurred since the Punic Wars. It was the end of the classic tradition. It was the beginning of the Middle Ages, and it happened at the very moment when Europe was on the way to becoming Byzantinized."