Barbara Quotes

The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.

The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.

The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.

If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.

Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.

We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.

That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.

The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.

Peace can come to both the giver and the receiver as we follow the promptings of the Spirit to serve one another.

Just do your job. Get in early. Stay late, and don’t complain. Fight the big fights.

It's a fact that it is much more comfortable to be in the position of the person who has been offended than to be the unfortunate cause of it.

The news media in general are liberals.

Because there are so many shows on and because I've been so hands-on - I've had a piece on almost every single week - I don't know how to cut back on that. You really can't.

A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.

Most attractive males talk to most attractive women as if they were Rotarians comparing sales percentages in Des Moines.

No one could ad lib like Peter. You would think that it was all scripted, he was so poetic, but it wasn't.

I didn't have a very religious family.

For a man who likes to talk, Fidel Castro does very few interviews.

The feeling is that Fidel Castro's much bigger than he actually is.

Fear can indeed be the beginning of wisdom.

man's oldest and least reputable occupation - war.

The raw material from which social institutions are fashioned is always more or less recalcitrant and any human society will tend to produce a caricature of itself.

When you're stuck sitting in a comfort zone, small problems become magnified. Get out of your comfort zone, touch the edge, and you come back with an appreciation for life.

When I breathe down my nose to say how do you do to a horse, it can hear that breath at anything up to twenty yards, for horses have the most acute sense of hearing.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

The rare female scientist was depicted as masculine, coarse, ugly, careworn and industrious but making no significant contribution.

Only if we understand our past, can we move forward to a brighter future.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."-Harry S. Truman

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

To be in your children's memories tomorrow, You have to be in their lives today.

To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.

All was in God's plan, and he had to accept even as he didn't understand.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that our demons were what shaped who we were. The things we do, the way we act, are all driven by the things we want locked away forever.

Many of us seem to live our lives looking for happiness. That is not always a bad thing, but it can be if we continually believe that happiness is someplace else and not in the present.

Don't look to a husband or a child or a friend or your family to make you happy. It is not within their capacity to do so.

She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.

Ceremony-the wine of human existence" - Morris R. Cohen

What I know about love, I can write on the head of a matchstick.

You are every missing part of me.

I was feeling like I was floating two inches above the sidewalk every step of the way. Feeling, almost, a magnetic pull back towards her and I wondered at all, if she felt it too.