Skip to content

History Quote by Ian McEwan

“The very word 'history' conjured a dull success of thrones and murderous clerical wrangling.” quote by Ian McEwan — Download Open image

““The very word 'history' conjured a dull success of thrones and murderous clerical wrangling.””

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.7 out of 5 (10 ratings)

History Success

More by Ian McEwan

“As you will see, we do not believe that artists have an obligation to strike up attitudes to the war. Indeed, they are wise and right to ignore it and devote themselves to other subjects. Since artists are politically impotent, they must use this time to develop at deeper emotional levels. Your work, your war work, is to cultivate your…

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

Image

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

Image

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

Image

“While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling…

Image

“Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favourite poet. Apparently, not many young women loved Phillip Larkin the way she did. 'If I were to construct a religion/ I should make use of water.' She said she liked the laconic…

“Perhaps it's one of those cases of a microcosm giving you the whole world. Like a spode dinner plate. Or a single cell. Or, as daisy says, like a Jane Austen novel. When player and listener together know the route so well, the pleasure is in the deviation, the unexpected turn against the grain. To see a world in a…

Who you get, and how it works out- there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice…

Image

“On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his…

It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.

Image

I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play…

Image

I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate.

Explore all 496 Ian McEwan quotes

More History quotes

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat…

Image

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small…

Norman Vincent Peale

Image

The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will…

Frederick Buechner

The NBA is my history.

Image

History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago... The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the…

We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what…

Image

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

Image

Things live and die, and then someone processes them into edible portions. This is a complete telling of the story, 'Food.' The basic plot…

David Fahrenthold

Image

History is a certain way, but you just change the point of view a little bit, and you discover a whole new side of…

Allison Schroeder

Image

We're at a point in history were we have to become a part of the neighborhood of inhabited planets, like a neighborhood of a community, which we have not even acknowledged that that community exists up until this point.

Today is a reality, tomorrow's a promise, and yesterday's history!

Image

Browse all 26,901 History quotes