Sabine Baring-Gould Quotes

You absorb 2,000 years of history just by being near the Thames.

A visit to Israel is always an experience in cognitive dissonance. The Israel you personally see and hear is so completely different from the Israel you read and hear about in the media.

The Caribbean is an immense ocean that just happens to have a few islands in it. The people have an immense respect for it, awe of it.

My husband John's and my breaks are often very culture heavy. He cannot pass a museum without venturing inside, so we tend to see a lot of architecture and so-called places of interest.

How is the newcomer to deal with Rome? What is one to make of this marble rubble, this milk of wolves, this blood of Caesars, this sunrise of Renaissance, this baroquery of blown stone, this warm hive of Italians, this antipasto of civilization?

A museum is like a valuing machine. Museums and the industrial society started at the same moment, and they're really tied into each other. They've been all about displaying objects and the kind of wealth that can be derived from objects and promoting that point.

Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry.

I don't want to be cliched, but Buckingham Palace is beautiful, and the old red telephone booths are really interesting to me. I've always wanted to see those.

Ethiopia is such a great country, beautiful place.

I love the Altai Mountains. Crimea, despite all the conflict, is a remarkable place historically, culturally and physically. The mountains drop down into the sea. Porpoises swim in the shallows. Horses gallop through the grass. There are huge rocks, castles, caves.

What I observe are the proud descendants of some of the most remarkable explorers and settlers who ever lived. We carry the cultural and historical inheritance of ocean navigators of peerless skill and their courageous kin who crossed vast distances before the tribes of Europe had ventured forth from their small part of the earth. Our forebearers populated islands scattered over the world's greatest stretch of water, covering a fifth of the planet's surface. It was one of the most amazing migrations in history, a triumphant testimony to human endurance, fortitude and achievement.

History will show that the Celto-Saxon people have been the main builders, designers, engineers, explorers, and even humanitarians in comparison to any other race or nationality

Victorian values…were the values when our country became great.

When Americans come to London they usually say how much they love the history, the tradition, the splendid tumpty-tum of things whose very repetition has become their point.

I would like to invest more of my brain space in understanding the history of my city, because whenever I learn about the history of Detroit, it's always so fascinating, from a little kind of beaver-trading post to the place where automobiles were manufactured.

Orkney has the kind of landscape that sort of lends itself to a relationship with the people. I think that relationship is intensified because of its remoteness and the long periods of time when there was no interaction with other cultures.

Anybody great, we're all interested in the relics. If you found an unfinished Gauguin, you'd still want to see it.

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.

That's what I want to do, ultimately: figure out a way to get the world engaged with discovery and protecting these ancient sites.

I think anybody's who's ever traveled to Paris or any sort of older European city will get caught up in the romance of the history and the ghosts you're surrounded by every day.

You look at passers-by in Rome and think, 'Do they know what they have here?' You can say the same about Philadelphia. Do people know what went on here?

I'm in a museum. I'm a relic.

Every time I go to Africa, I feel like I hit true north. There is a depth of feeling that I have for the continent, in the richness of the people, the suffering, but also the transcendent joy that is there - it's like nowhere else on the planet.

The Lowcountry traditionally is a logical place where the big ships stopped and brought new things in from the ocean, and the islands have a mystical tradition. It is such a visual place, too, with these iconic villages with the Spanish moss and the village and historical homes and the coast.

After Notre Dame, what is there?