Kate Williams Quotes

It is for all these buildings, therefore, of all times and styles, that we plead, and call upon those who have to deal with them to put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as are obviously meant for support or covering, and show no pretence of other art, and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient for its present use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying.

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around. This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.' And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice. Wish granted. Now what?

A few hints as to the craft may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing!

I think that if I have a chance to go back, why not just go back all the way in history to the times of the pyramids or the Roman days? I think there are so many great historic times until now that I would like to get a little peek of those periods, rather than just 1984. Why limit yourself?

In neglected fields the fern grows, which must be cleared out by fire.

Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.

If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

If only Jupiter would restore me those bygone years.

If you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you.

Nobody ever lived in the past.

Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.

So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.

We are all time voyagers leaving history in our wake, pioneering into the future.

Don't you realize," Merlin said to his pupil, "that the history of the universe has brought us here to this second?

History ... with its long, leisurely, gentlemanly labors, the books arriving by post, the cards to be kept and filed, the sections to be copied, the documents to be checked, is the ideal pursuit for the New England mind.

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind.

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?

I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make my writing in history deeper, if that's the right word to use. And that is what I did.

History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.

We save the honor of Jesus when we restore His Person to life from the state of inanity to which the apologists have reduced it, and give it once more a living relation to history, which it certainly possessed.

That's the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected, and inconvenient, times but it's set in stone.