David Hackett Fischer · 564 pages
Rating: (11.8K votes)
“Until Washington crossed the Delaware, the triumph of the old order seemed inevitable. Thereafter, things would never be the same again.”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
“Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
“It was typical of Washington’s style of leadership to present a promising proposal as someone else’s idea, rather than his own.”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Paine began. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
“Thus the fate of entire Kingdoms often depends upon a few blockheads and irresolute men.”43”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
“She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink. This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it.”
― James Salter, quote from Light Years
“Just because it’s not easy, doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”
― D. Nichole King, quote from Love Always, Kate
“Fanatics, mystics, and extremists all tended toward irrational and unexpected action.”
― Koethi Zan, quote from The Never List
“Obviously, no one suspects men with flowers of evil intentions”
― Nicolas Barreau, quote from One Evening in Paris
“And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world. For we moderns have nothing of our own. We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us. But the only value of an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, in the binding or the wrapper. And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: “Manual of internal culture for external barbarians.” The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs. For what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without? Only one,—to be affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously, we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression. Men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters, and the [Pg 34] considerable cleft between substance and form is widened; until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism, if only their memories be kept continually titillated, and there flow a constant stream of new things to be known, that can be neatly packed up in the cupboards of their memory.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
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