Jean de Joinville > Quotes

“That the good they did was largely leavened with evil may be said of every war that has ever been waged; that bad men rose by them while good men fell, is and must be true wherever and whenever the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong. But that, in the end, they were a benefit to the world no one who reads can doubt; and that in their course they brought out a love for all that is heroic in human nature—the love of freedom, the honour of prowess, sympathy with sorrow, perseverance to the last, and patient endurance without hope—the chronicles of the age abundantly prove; proving, moreover, that it was by the experience of those times that the former of those virtues were realised, and presented to posterity.”
― Jean de Joinville, Chronicles of the Crusades