Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahillis an American scholar and writer. He is best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization...
across asia dust found japan massive organic pacific previous research roughly shown soil spring storms transport united united-states
Previous research has shown that every spring there are massive dust storms in Asia that transport soil eastward to Japan and across the Pacific to the United States. Now we've found that sulfate and organic aerosols are also present, and in roughly the same amounts.
happened history
We think we know what history is. We think we know what happened and we don't.
bring early question reminds whatever whenever
Someone told me early on that whenever you get a question that you don't like, say, 'That reminds me ...' and go off on whatever you feel like, ... No one will ever bring you back.
books people realize surprise
Every one of these books is going to have one really big surprise in it to make people say, 'I didn't realize that,'
inconsistent one-thing
Is is seldom possible to say of the medievals that they *always* did one thing and *never* another; they were marvelously inconsistent.
book hero europe
Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.
innovation facts affair
The Irish innovation was to make all confession a completely private affair between penitent and priest - and to make it as repeatable as necessary. (In fact, repetition was encouraged on the theory that, oh well, everyone pretty much sinned just about all the time.)
kings husband father
The phrase the violent bear it away fascinated the 20th century Irish-American storyteller Flannery O'Connor, who used it as the title of one of her novels. O'Connor's surname connects her to an Irish royal family descended from Conchobor (pronounced Connor), the prehistoric king of Ulster who was foster father to Cuchulainn and husband of the unwilling Derdriu. In the western world, the antiquity of Irish lineages is exceeded only by that of the Jews.
children night justice
Throughout the world, half of all children go to bed hungry each night and one in seven of God's children is facing starvation. Before such statistics, believers should never forget Dostoevsky's assertion that the suffering of children is the greatest proof against the existence of God; for without justice, there is no God.
mother children our-world
Throughout our world the cry of the poor so often goes unheard. The prophets harangued Israel and Judah unceasingly about the powerless and marginalized, the overlooked widows, orphans, and "sojourners in our midst," who are still with us today as single mothers, hungry children, and helpless immigrants, wraiths invisible in our prosperous societies.
dream morning adventure
We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews.
shapes world poet
The Irish believed that gods, druids, poets, and others in touch with the magical world could be literal shape-shifters
pain war blessed
We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage - almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.
swimming imagination noble
In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.