Quotations

“The whole world is not worth one soul.” St. Francis de Sales. 

"Ukrainians have to understand that they and the Russians are brothers and Russians have to understand that once you cross the Dnieper they are completely different from us." Solzhenitsyn quoted by Glenn Diesen

"The sentimentalist preparing the pathway for the brute." Robert Louis Stevenson. This is the history of the this century so far.

"Cecil B. DeMille,
Rather against his will,
Was persuaded to leave Moses
Out of The Wars of the Roses."
Not EC Clerihew - said to be by Nicolas Bentley - quoted by Andrew Roberts

'But at least DeMille’s movies had crisp, quotable dialogue: The screenplay of this [Ridley Scott's] movie, by contrast, says more about the argot of 2020s Hollywood than it does about the repartee of the Napoleonic court. Napoleon was a genuinely witty man, constantly making jokes that are funny even today. By contrast, Joaquin Phoenix never says anything amusing, except unconsciously, as in the lines: “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop,” and “They want me to abdicate? Fine, I’ll abdicate!” When the Russians burn down the Kremlin, he says, “It’s not very sporting, is it?” When he quarrels with Lord Whitworth, the British ambassador to Paris, Phoenix is given the line, “You think you’re so great because you have boats!”'

Andrew Roberts