If we wish to understand our own place on earth, we must seek to understand those who have gone on before us. We must look beyond the present moment and see ourselves reflected in the deep pool of time as individual elements of a greater humanity, and not as the passing shapes that we may glimpse every day in a looking glass, which then are gone forever.

All leaders who go to war in the name of God are either zealots or hypocrites.

If we wish to understand our own place on earth, we must seek to understand those who have gone on before us. We must look beyond the present moment and see ourselves reflected in the deep pool of time as individual elements of a greater humanity.

While the traditional image of knights in armour is accurate and widely accepted, the equally representative image of knights wearing corsets and suspender belts is perhaps less well known.

The last day I was here, in eighteen forty-three, was the only time since the plague when we were not at war.

All gentlemen of any rank with whom he holds conversations can speak Latin, French, Spanish or Italian. They are aware that the English language is only used in this island and would consider themselves uncivilized if they knew no other tongue than their own.

It is better to eat the dog than be eaten by the dog’, Montagu had remarked quietly to the king, after being dismissed from Mortimer’s presence.

There’s so much beauty in the world, don’t close your eyes to it just because you’ve lost your own small patch of happiness.

Lord Acton’s famous phrase: ’power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

The man who has no knowledge of the past has no wisdom.