The World

If a kingdom be a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.

Samuel Johnson

The world is a mountain and our deeds, voices;

The voices have echoes; to us they will return.

Rumi

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

Chinua Achebe

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such an affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.

Theodore Parker

So many wars, so many shapes of crime . . .

Unholy Mars bends all to his mad will;

The world is like a chariot run wild.

Virgil

The whole question is: who controls whom.

Lenin

He who believes that by studying isolated histories, he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is like the person who, after looking at the severed limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has seen the creature alive in all its action and grace . . . It is only indeed by study of the interconnection of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.

Polybius

Midway on life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight path was lost.

Dante Alighieri