Provenance Quotes

“Often, the story of an artifact’s journey is more remarkable than the object itself.”
― Mackenzie Finklea, Beyond the Halls: An Insider's Guide to Loving Museums

“Might it have been possible for Napoleon to win this battle? We answer no. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.

For Bonaparte to be conqueror at Waterloo was no longer within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of acts was under way in which Napoleon had no place. The ill-will of events had long been coming.

It was time for this titan to fall.

The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the equilibrium. This individual alone counted for more than the whole of mankind. This plethora of all human vitality concentrated within a single head, the world rising to the brain of one man, would be fatal to civilization if it endured. The moment had come for incorruptible supreme equity to look into it. Probably the principles and elements on which regular gravitation in the moral and material orders depend had begun to mutter. Reeking blood, overcrowded cemeteries, weeping mothers–these are formidable plaintiffs. When the earth is suffering from a surcharge, there are mysterious moanings from the deeps that the heavens hear.

Napoleon had been impeached before the Infinite, and his fall was decreed.

He annoyed God.

Waterloo is not a battle; it is the changing face of the universe.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Whenever golden boughs spring from rotting tree trunks, mortal man has great difficulty in accepting their provenance. And yet the evidence of their eyes presents the blinding truth.”
― Stewart Stafford