She was an autocrat, didn't really believe in democracy. The benefit of her approach was that, if you work with twenty people and ask everybody's opinion, you would never achieve what she did.

It is indeed strange, given the heavy emphasis placed by chroniclers on Churchill's sheer magnitude of personality, that the ingredient of pure ambition should be so much ignored or even disallowed.

What right does my present have to speak of my past? Has my present some advantage over my past? What "grace" might have enlightened me? except that of passing time, or of a good cause, encountered on my way?

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

When will the human race choose wisely? All know it is just as eventful, if not more so, when the young seek adventure, purpose, and dreams; instead of blaming everyone but themselves if they choose otherwise.

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.

The Bedlam that greeted James Tilly Matthews, then, was not so much a baroque spectacle of depravity as an exhausted and run-down public institution, its building falling apart and its professional image tarnished.

Desolina and Tony had attended one-room schoolhouses until the third grade. ... According to Tony, there were hardly enough pencils and sober teachers to go around. [Author's grandparents educational background.]

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

I encourage anyone who has gone through hardships to look back through their life’s chapters and see what can be turned into a book. For you never know what heartache God, one day, can turn into a redemptive story.

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.

144461I know very little having to do with human beings that doesn't also have to do with connection. We want to be noticed, we want to be good enough, we want friends, and we want to be loved. We want our place to stand.

Many had suspected that the political disasters of the past few years had a hidden cause. The bloodiness of the French mob rule was something unnatural, with a pitiless and inhuman progression that had never been seen before.

...she herself loved the character of Elizabeth Bennet. "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.

Obsessed with Christine to the end, his last statement as he left his cell was, 'to kill is the final possession'. But Muldowney was wrong. He had never possessed Christine; the resistance burning within her was too great.