Annals Quotes

“A phrase caught Brunetti’s attention, and he went back and read it again, and then again. ‘I give only one example of the falsity of gossip and hearsay, and I urge my readers to beware of incredible tales, however widely they might be believed and instead to believe the unvarnished truth;’
Brunetti let the open book fall on to his stomach and stared out the window at rooftops and windows that reflected the setting sun. Two thousand years ago, the bulk of the population illiterate, most news was transmitted by word of mouth, and Tacitus was warning his readers to be careful about believing what they heard and to trust only unvarnished truth. ‘Whatever that is,’ a voice whispered to Brunetti’s inner ear. Had Tacitus been a prophet as well as an historian, Brunetti wondered, by so well anticipating the consequences of television and social media?”
― Donna Leon

“Like water our ideals for writing what seems at first to be a calling to pen a masterpiece, it at first can be pure, fluid even (words can come easily) but we also have to learn to work with what our eyes glaze over as weak substitutes, words that we think have no substance to what we are learning towards. What is every poet's intention? Their intention is to forge, nullify, create, defend, fill the reader with the awe and inspiration that every poet themselves craves. They want to carve a name for themselves in the annals of history, leave a not so quiet legacy behind. Poets want immortality or rather they want their words to become immortal. Perhaps even Marlowe and Shakespeare had discussions about this.”
― Abigail George, Feeding The Beasts

“For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the pioneers of time travel, it’s one of the foundation stones of the Theory behind it. It’s something of a paradox – a mind-boggling annotation in the ever-puzzling and ever growing Anals of History. (Some readers may still be thinking that should be ‘Annals’ – however, the author of this work cannot be blamed for what you may think.)”
― Christina Engela, The Time Saving Agency

“To understand this new frontier, I will have to try to master one of the most difficult and counterintuitive theories ever recorded in the annals of science: quantum physics. Listen to those who have spent their lives immersed in this world and you will have a sense of the challenge we face. After making his groundbreaking discoveries in quantum physics, Werner Heisenberg recalled, "I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?" Einstein declared after one discovery, "If it is correct it signifies the end of science." Schrödinger was so shocked by the implications of what he'd cooked up that he admitted, "I do not like it and I am sorry I had anything to do with it." Nevertheless, quantum physics is now one of the most powerful and well-tested pieces of science on the books. Nothing has come close to pushing it off its pedestal as one of the great scientific achievements of the last century. So there is nothing to do but to dive headfirst into this uncertain world. Feynman has some good advice for me as I embark on my quest: "I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

“A historian who doesn't want to make history is a bad historian.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov