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The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Barbara Tuchman

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Barbara Tuchman
History
Fleet
Much
Discretion
Headed
Base
North
Sea
Glory
Rendezvous
War
Sailed

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
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When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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Books are humanity in print.
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Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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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.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
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No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
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To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
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The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
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Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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