“He insisted on clearing the table, and again devoted himself to his game of patience: piecing together the map of Paris, the bits of which hed stuffed into the pocket of his raincoat, folded up any...”

“The Oberge des Mailletz is by far the oldest tavern of which any record can found in the City archives. In 1292, Adam des Mailletz, inn-keeper, paid a tithe of 18 sous and 6 deniers.This we learn f...”

“An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, ...”

“Men are so isolated, prisoners of their own wretched selves, that they can be unbelievably sociable.”

“Silence, like madness, is only comparative.”

“Id very much like to conclude' something from this experiment. Or that it should raise a question in my mind, and a commitment to get to the bottom of the matter, to investigate, to come up with an...”

“They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.”

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another c...”

“The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inh...”

“A man who tells you to follow him will turn his followers into his company, while a true leader who does not tell you to follow him, will sit in the company of his followers.”

“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.”

“I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed...”

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

“It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. ...”

“Magic or nature, they were much the same thing to Magnus.”