I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and honestly I may as well just start it again now because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history and Europe has helped write ours.
All in all for someone who was immersed in fascinated by and dedicated to flight I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.
It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.
Of all the species of literary composition perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed which is wanting in general history.
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.
Following the light of the sun we left the Old World.
Mr. Speaker our Nation must no longer be complacent about underage drinking and its alarming consequences. We must bring this national public health crisis out of the shadow and into the bright light of a national priority.
Well what did we buy? Instead of a leaner smarter government we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy and which will put 16 500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.
Left to ourselves we might pick the wrong health insurance the wrong mortgage the wrong school for our kids why unless they stop us we might pick the wrong light bulb.
And so our goal on health care is if we can get instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year it's going up at the level of inflation maybe just slightly above inflation we've made huge progress. And by the way that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That's why we did it.
A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
If kind parents love their children and delight in their happiness then he who is perfect goodness in sending abroad mortal contagions doth assuredly direct their use.
More company increases happiness but does not lighten or diminish misery.
Happiness for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light to the feet thin ice that cracks and so may no one touch you who loves you.
Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water using the word lightly but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it but should take up the challenge.
History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth more industry more happiness more human enlightenment than from any other way.
Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.
To show a child what once delighted you to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.
It is work work that one delights in that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.
When a small child I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment but soon flits away.