70 Quotes by Simon Winchester

No one had a clue what they were up against: They were marching blindfolded through molasses. And.

His life was merely a slow-moving tragedy, an act of steady dying conducted before everyone’s eyes.

Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays – they are all in this one book.

In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist. If the language that so inspired Shakespeare had limits, if its words had definable origins, spellings, pronunciations, meanings – then no single book existed that established them, defined them, and set them down.

We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it’s relatively geologically stable. I am sure there is no emergency plan for Topeka.

God – who in that part of London society was of course firmly held to be an Englishman – naturally approved the spread of the language as an essential imperial device;.

We kid ourselves that we’re trying to be empathetic with the human condition from a distance, but I don’t think that is it at all. It’s stupid; it’s a waste of time. But when the earth flexes its muscles, that’s rather different. That’s a powerful reminder of where we are.

But those who initially went to the West were overtaken by the barbarism of the frontier with astonishing speed – think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness. There was murder, mayhem, robbery, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, and all of it on a positively Homeric scale that still has cultural anthropologists enraptured.

There is a Sacerdotall dignitie in my native Countrey contiguate to me, where I now contemplate: which your worshipfull benignitie could sone impenetrate for mee, if it would like you to extend your sedules, and collaude me in them to the right honourable lord Chaunceller, or rather Archgrammacian of Englande.