“But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.”

“Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.”

“The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.”

“William Shakespeare: You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.”

“Everything in this business makes sense, because it serves a real purpose, fills a need that's a part of living. Even a single nail, like this one, fulfills a function. Drive it into a crucial place and you can depend on it to do a job, keep on doing it for a hundred years to come. Long after we're dead and gone, both of us.”

“All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness.”

“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.”