94 Quotes by Stephen Greenblatt

Tyrannical power is more easily exercised when it appears that the old order continues to exist. The reassuring consensual structures may now be hollowed out and merely decorative, but they are all still in place, so that the bystanders, who crave psychological security and a sense of well-being, can persuade themselves that the rule of law is being upheld.

What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

But I never listen to music while I’m writing.

I am committed by trade to urging people to attend carefully to the verbal surfaces of what they read.

Even in systems that have multiple moderating institutions, the chief executive almost always has considerable power. But what happens when that executive is not mentally fit to hold office? What if he begins to make decisions that threaten the well-being and security of the realm?

What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of the world.

Most teachers of the humanities lived itinerant lives, traveling from city to city, giving lectures on a few favorite authors, and then restlessly moving on, in the hope of finding new patrons.

The mob then dragged her corpse outside the city walls and burned it. Their hero Cyril was eventually made a saint.

Falstaff something roughly similar – a gentleman sinking into mire – but darker and deeper: a debauched genius; a fathomlessly cynical, almost irresistible confidence man; a diseased, cowardly, seductive, lovable monster; a father who cannot be trusted.