Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.
Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)
No harm’s done to history by making it something someone would want to read.”, NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.
Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.
When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.
In an exhibition wherein paintings of nudes were commonplace, that of Madame Gautreau in her black evening dress was considered scandalously erotic. -from The Greater Journey
To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn’t just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it’s an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or musi
No harm’s done to history by making it something someone would want to
You can’t be a full participant in our democracy if you don’t know our history.
You’ve got to marinate your head, in that time and culture.You’ve got to become them.”(Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)
[While writing history], I’ve kept the most interesting company imaginable with people long gone. Some I’ve come to know better than many I know in real life, since in real life we don’t get to read other people’s mail.
Measurements “are never enough. The artist’s eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors.
Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.
…it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose. -Wilbur Wright, 1911
We who are residing in a foreign country, away from the immediate scene of action, perhaps can feel more deeply than those at home the evil effects of the present distracted condition of our country.
All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others. -Bishop Milton Wright
To be unable to read was the ultimate measure of wretchedness.
Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so
A man who will steal for me will steal from me.” Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing on the spot one of his best cowhands who was about to claim for his boss an unmarked animal.
The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think….Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.
A veteran artist counsels a less experienced one to start a painting using colors in the middle range so that the painter can move to more extreme colors as the work progresses.
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. – John Adams
The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished.
We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better. -Bishop Milton Wright to Orville Wright, 20 Sept. 1908
Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It’s accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
On a medical school professor noted for slowly, carefully interviewing the patient: “He taught the love of truth.
In America, applause is won only by physical exertion.
My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It’s about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It’s about Washington and the army and the war. It’s the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn’t just part of our civic responsibility. To me it’s an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
No harm’s done to history by making it something someone would want to read.
Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.