Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carl Clinton Van Doren

Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained.

Marissa Moss

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

Thomas Mallon

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.

Tom Hulce

Teachers don't tell us the truth about historical people. If we knew the truth, parents couldn't hold their lives up as examples.

Brian Eno

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.

David Mitchell

All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.

David Korten

An active propaganda machinery controlled bv the world's largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species.

Dave Barry

The Sixties are now considered a historical period, just like the Roman Empire.

Kara Walker

I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.

Diane Setterfield

Tragedy alters everything.

Carlton Cuse

Tragedy is a great storytelling form. It worked extremely well for Shakespeare. It worked extremely well for Jim Cameron with Titanic.

Jane Smiley

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity.

William Shakespeare

I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy.

Carl Jung

The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body.

Benjamin E. Mays

The tragedy of this life is not failure, but low aim.

Charlie Munger

Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

Charlie Munger

Here's one truth that perhaps your typical investment counselor would disagree with: if you're comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what?! Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

Arthur Rimbaud

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Buster Keaton

Life is too serious to do farce comedy.

Donald Sinden

I've been very fortunate. I've been in theater, films, television, radio, tragedy, comedy, farce - I've been in a musical and in music halls, in pantomime. I was once ringmaster in a circus.

Jean Baudrillard

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

Samuel Johnson

The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.