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Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.

Barbara Tuchman

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Barbara Tuchman
Distraction
Holiness
Obstacles
Devil
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Century
Temptress
Church
Rival
Woman
Obstacle
Women
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bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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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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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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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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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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Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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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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Books are humanity in print.
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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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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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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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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