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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

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More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
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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 truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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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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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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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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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.
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No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
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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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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
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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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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
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Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
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If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
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