History

"Let us define history, in its troublesome duplicity, as the events or record of the past. Human history is a brief spot in space, and its first lesson is modesty. At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set out little globe topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the smiling sun may slip off tangentially-as some think our planet did a few astronomic moments ago-and fall upon us in a wild embrace ending in grief and pain. we accept these possibilities in out stride, and retort to the cosmos in the words of Pascal: "When the universe has crushed him, he will still be the nobler that that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing.""- Will and Ariel Durant The Lessons of History.