On Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1831)
“Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.”
Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V
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Thomas Browne 78
English polymath 1605–1682Related quotes
Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: Something was working in Roadstrum's little ape head. When he had been a man he had always known when it was time for action; particularly he had always known the last moment when action was still possible. He knew now that that moment was come very near. … Then a blinding light burst upon Roadstrum, and he saw the truth of the situation. Many things Roadstrum was not, and it was sometimes wondered why he was the natural leader of all the men. He was their leader because he was a man on whom the blinding light sometimes descended.
In the first part of this quote, Adams alludes to the figure of the Virgin, the subject of Chapters V–XIII of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 21 (closing words)
Source: The Autobiography of My Mother
Sir Hartley Shawcross, British prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, July 27, 1946 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-27-46.asp - day 188 of the trial
Travis Parker, Chapter 15, p. 199
2000s, The Choice (2007)