Francis Parkman: Quotes about the world

Francis Parkman was American historian. Explore interesting quotes on world.
Francis Parkman: 56 quotes0 likes

“The Revolution began at the top,—in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,—and propagated itself downwards.”

Francis Parkman

Source: Montcalm and Wolfe http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14517/14517-8.txt (1884), Ch. 1

“America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,—a land of romance, adventure, and gold.”

Francis Parkman

Pt. I, Ch. 3
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

“When America was first made known to Europe, the part assumed by France on the borders of that new world was peculiar, and is little recognized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land, burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and avarice, and while England, with soberer steps and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France that those barbarous shores first learned to serve the ends of peaceful commercial industry.”

Francis Parkman

Pt. II, Ch. 1 Early French Adventure in North America
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

“Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, and freedom pierced with vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay and death. Kindled with new life, the nations gave birth to a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine wall the waves of innovation beat in vain.”

Francis Parkman

Pt. I, Ch. 7
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

“Every ship from the New World came freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened, thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea; they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds.”

Francis Parkman

Pt. I, Ch. 1 Early Spanish Adventure
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

“In the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow.”

Francis Parkman

Pt. I, Ch. 2 Villegagnon
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)