All in History
A great deal of the Quran echoes what is said in both the Torah and the Christian Bible; all three books preach fairness and benevolence.
The exception between them is that the good teachings of the Torah and Christian Bible apply to all of God’s children, while the good teachings of the Quran apply only to the followers of Allah.
Everyone else is promised Jihad: continuous ho[y war until every Infidel is scourged from the Earth
I have some entirely unreliable thoughts about four particular Eras. Worse yet, I'm shamelessly appropriating the large idea of Era to describe smaller ideas about shorter-lived cultural enthusiasms. I say, the time of the season is an Era.
Local weather-reports could be standardized: "42° Fahrenheit, more-or-less, rain, snow, and violent winds expected". The forecast rarely varies: cold, wet, stormy and overcast.
Anything a Jew sets out to do will be given very earnest attention. Jews have heard about goofing-off, they just can't get the hang of it.
Arcadia became treasured memory, Arcadians became Cajuns, and Longfellow's story of Evangeline became Cajun history.
The truth of art transcends dry history.
Miss Isabella Bird traveled the globe writing story after story of far-away people and places. There would be nothing like her nineteenth-century travel books until James Michener started writing his twentieth-century travel books.
Nature's schedule, whether fury or calm, cannot be managed by any amount of human tinkering - no matter how much effort the faithful put into trying.
According to Kundera, it started in London then spread to Paris, then on to Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, and Istanbul.
Kundera thought it odd that an entire species would desert the natural word for the unnatural world.
The Maid of Orleans is probably better known by the anglicized version of her name: Joan of Arc.
The Maccabees influenced in ways known - and in some ways beyond our knowing.
The method used to spin history in Nero’s time was the same as it is now: Tell the truth, but put the emphasis on the parts you want remembered; push the parts you don’t want remembered to marginal status.
Cinema has a thousand fathers, all of them labored at nearly the same time to create the illusion of pictures moving. Innovators in England, France, Germany, and America all contributed significantly to the history of cinema.
When the winds blows wet and warm. When gray winter retreats from blooming green becoming. When new leaves dance like dyads in the rain. When the passion of the equinox stirs the blood and the sap begins to rise, so then does Dionysus, the god of all that is wet and glistening.
There are two inscriptions on the walls of the Temple at Delphi: Know Thyself; and Nothing in Excess. They were inscribed there some twenty-five hundred years ago. These two aphorisms were wise then. They remain so today.
Alchemists struggled for centuries
to turn base metals into gold.
They famously failed. It can’t be done.
Gold only forms when stars explode.
A lot of folks visit Niagara Falls, including me. I went in the mid-sixties. Little did I know that a distinguished Egyptian Pharaoh was there as well.