💬 Quotes

"Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

"Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth."

"A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as the animals receive each their food and their poison."

"It is written upon the rocks in a thousand ways, that suffering is the badge of the human race, but we have chosen to think it is only the badge of the unblessed."

"He who strives for the wealth of others shall find only emptiness, but he who shares what little he has shall find the golden river within his own heart."

"The earth gives its treasures not to the greedy who demand them with curses, but to the patient who ask with labor and love."

"Water is the mother of the vine, the nurse of the acorn, the sustainer of all life; yet it can become a roaring terror when poisoned by malice."

"The black stones of selfishness had built a wall higher than any mountain, shutting out the warmth of the sun and the grace of the rain."

"To turn the golden river to your own private use is to turn life into death; for the treasure of the earth is meant for all, not for the tyrant's hoard."

"The picture is not merely a portrait of two friends; it is a profound philosophical treatise upon the vanity of human wishes, the transitoriness of earthly power, and the certainty of death."

"In the terrestrial globe at the feet of the ambassadors, the eye is arrested by the town of Polisy, the domain of Jean de Dinteville—a touch which anchors cosmic vastness to a deeply personal reality."

"The broken string upon the lute is no mere accidental detail of still life, but a deliberate and eloquent symbol of discord, perhaps alluding to the religious schisms and the fracture of European unity during the Reformation."

"By the introduction of the anamorphic skull, Holbein compels the worldly pride of the ambassadors and the spectator alike to confront the ultimate leveller of human greatness."

"Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur de Polisy, stands not only as the embodiment of the French court's diplomatic finesse, but as a man burdened by the melancholic gravity of a troubled epoch."

"Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, brings to the composition an air of contemplative serenity, balancing the martial and political grandeur of his companion with the quiet dignity of the scholar and churchman."

"The story of the English-speaking peoples is insensibly woven with the story of the British Isles, yet it transcends them."

"Institutions do not arise like mushrooms in a night; they are plants which slowly shape their roots into the soil of tradition and habit."

"We are a strange people. We are not logical, we are never tidy, but we manage to survive and sometimes to astonish the world."

"In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill."