Johan Huizinga Quotes

One test of a great work of history is does it make you feel like you have lived through the period

In a certain sense all men are historians.

The events of the time may be transmitted to posterity; but the agitation of the public mind can never be fully comprehended but by those who were witnesses of it

For people who feel things in an enormous way, it's pretty hard to live in this world.

If you really think about it, if we begin to teach history exactly the way that it happened - good, bad, ugly, no matter what - I believe that we're going to find that we are closer, more connected than we are apart.

I'm very sensitive. It's always been something I'm very in tune with. I am very emotional. Sometimes to the point of where I just want to hide away, because I can't get a handle on myself.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow,--whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.

History at its best is vicarious experience.

Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.

History is the shank of the social sciences.

Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.

George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

I'm totally into the emotional aspect of things.

It's a real joy to be moved by something, but it doesn't happen often to me.

Be as delicate as possible. If communication accomplishes something on the gross but damages something on the level of feeling then it is a spiritual loss! The feeling is more important for life.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know?

I do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally.

I'm a very sensitive person, and I feel what makes me vulnerable. But I see that as a good thing. I really enjoy experiencing all the different emotions in life.

Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.

Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.

I perceive the world through the wide range of emotions that whirl all around in it.

Two of an actress's greatest assets are love and pain. A great actress, even a good actress, must have plenty of both in her life.

One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.