Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “On May 10, 1933, the Nazi Party burned unwelcome books – Einstein, Freud, the brothers Mann, and many others – in great pyres throughout Germany, but seven days later Hitler declared himself committed to peace and went so far as to pledge complete disarmament if other countries followed suit. The world swooned with relief.”

— Erik Larson

202. “At first alienists describes this condition as “moral insanity” and those who exhibited the disorder as “moral imbeciles.” They later adopted the term “psychopath”.”

— Erik Larson

203. “These were men, wrote Lincoln Steffens, “who will not have an office unless it is up where the air is cool and fresh, the outlook broad and beautiful, and where there is silence in the heart of business.”

— Erik Larson

204. “In the following pages I tell the story of these men and this event, but I must insert here a notice: However strange or macabre some of the following incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction.”

— Erik Larson

205. “These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain’s hour of need, the moment captured in an immediately famous painting by Bernard Gribble, The Return of the Mayflower.”

— Erik Larson

206. “Hunt was the janissary of a dead vernacular.”

— Erik Larson

207. “Whenever they come up against someone who will not stand for their arrogance, they climb down from their perch and behave,” she wrote. “They respect character when they meet it, and if more people had shown firmness to Hitler’s handyman Papen and his acolytes in small every day contacts, as well as in big affairs of state, the Nazi growth could have been slowed up.”

— Erik Larson

208. “Time lost can never be recovered,” he said, “and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.”

— Erik Larson

209. “These were complicated people moving through a complicated time, before the monsters declared their true nature.”

— Erik Larson

210. “Isaac, at this point, still considered Moore a personal friend. It hurt him, no doubt, that Moore had distorted the story of his experience in the storm. Isaac had lost his wife and home, and had nearly lost a daughter, but Moore could not be bothered with the actual details.”

— Erik Larson

211. “Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre,” Stead wrote, “but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet’s dream, silent as a city of the dead.”

— Erik Larson

212. “Mass-Observation diarist Olivia Cockett also found it repellent. “It shouldn’t be allowed,” she insisted. “It makes play and sport of agonies, not to help people bear them, but to pander to the basest, crudest, most-to-be-wiped-out feelings of cruel violence.”

— Erik Larson

213. “History is full of lessons about the redemption of Lost Causes.”

— Erik Larson

214. “He cared little about whether they had expertise with airplanes. “They are all captains of industry, and industry is like theology,” Beaverbrook said. “If you know the rudiments of one faith you can grasp the meaning of another.”

— Erik Larson

215. “Tears come without any provocation.10 Headache all day.” The school’s headmistress and founder, Sarah Porter, offered therapeutic counsel. “Cheer up,” she told Theodate.11 “Always be happy.” It did not work.”

— Erik Larson

216. “Churchill himself found it all thrilling. “After all,” he told an interviewer with the Chicago Daily News later that week, “what more glorious thing can a spirited young man experience than meeting an opponent at four hundred miles an hour, with twelve or fifteen hundred horse power in his hands and unlimited offensive power? It is the most splendid form of hunting conceivable.”

— Erik Larson

217. “It was a difficult ride for him. He had passed this way before, to bury John Root. The fair had begun with death, and now it had ended with death.”

— Erik Larson

218. “Tea was comfort and history; above all, it was English. As long as there was tea, there was England.”

— Erik Larson

219. “You’ll see it lovely. I never will. But it will be lovely.”

— Erik Larson

220. “When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves in which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.”

— Erik Larson

221. “I have examined the laws of the United States carefully and I do not find any law which says that a white man shall be punished for killing a Chinaman.”

— Erik Larson

222. “On a crystalline fall day you can almost hear the tinkle of fine crystal, the rustle of silk and wool, almost smell the expensive cigars.”

— Erik Larson

223. “The edition was full of fresh detail about the North London Cellar Murder and the escalating search for two suspects, a doctor and his lover.”

— Erik Larson

224. “There is nothing like the diversion of travel for one who is mentally fagged.”

— Erik Larson

225. “Five months after the disaster, Charles Lauriat wrote a book about his experience, entitled The Lusitania’s Last Voyage.”

— Erik Larson

226. “We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down.”

— Erik Larson

227. “She lapsed into “melancholia,” a sweet name for depression.”

— Erik Larson

228. “Some captains made no attempt to save the lives of merchant seamen; others went so far as to tow lifeboats towards land. One u-boat commander sent the captain of a torpedoed ship three bottles of wine to ease the long row ashore.”

— Erik Larson

229. “Kennedy, in turn, was not well liked in London. The wife of Churchill’s foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, detested the ambassador for his pessimism about Britain’s chances for survival and his prediction that the RAF would quickly be crushed. She wrote, “I could have killed him with pleasure.”

— Erik Larson

230. “Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime?”

— Erik Larson

231. “All were wealthy and at the peaks of their careers, but all also bore the scars of nineteenth-century life, their pasts full of wrecked rail cars, fevers, and the premature deaths of loved ones.”

— Erik Larson

232. “U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.”

— Erik Larson

233. “He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.” The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.”

— Erik Larson

234. “It was as if a load had suddenly been lifted from the German soul. The sense of relief could almost be felt in the air. Papen had put into words what thousands upon thousands of his countrymen had locked up in their hearts for fear of the awful penalties of speech.”

— Erik Larson

235. “As in a great castle which has long contended with time, the mighty central mass of the donjon towered up intact and seemingly everlasting. But the outworks and the battlements had fallen away, and its imperious ruler dwelt only in the special apartments and corridors with which he had a lifelong familiarity.”

— Erik Larson

236. “Gleichschaltung.”

— Erik Larson

237. “His quest to create a powerful first impression was good showmanship, but it also exposed the aesthetic despot residing within.”

— Erik Larson

238. “Among a list of measures effective for inducing vomiting, she included: “Injections of tobacco into the anus through a pipe stem.”

— Erik Larson

239. “No one knows who coined the term, but it fit, and the Montauk became the first building to be called a skyscraper.”

— Erik Larson

240. “Damn those bloody Huns for breaking up an enjoyable party.”

— Erik Larson

241. “Later, Dodd wrote a description of Hitler in his diary. “He is romantic-minded and half-informed about great historical events and men in Germany.” He had a “semi-criminal” record. “He has definitely said on a number of occasions that a people survives by fighting and dies as a consequence of peaceful policies. His influence is and has been wholly belligerent.”

— Erik Larson

242. “She tooled around the city in an electric car.”

— Erik Larson

243. “Mackworth turned to Conner and said, “I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair.” “So did I,” Conner replied, “but I’ve learnt a devil of a lot in the last five minutes.”

— Erik Larson

244. “Churchill was particularly insistent that ministers compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. “It is slothful not to compress your thoughts,” he said.”

— Erik Larson

245. “Ferris had created more than simply an engineering novelty. Like the inventors of the elevator, he had conjured an entirely new physical sensation.”

— Erik Larson

246. “At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on.”

— Erik Larson

247. “It was night time, Inspector Thompson wrote. Those in the plane were transfixed with delight to look down from the windows and see the amazing spectacle of a whole city lighted up. Washington represented something immensely precious. Freedom, hope, strength. We had not seen an illuminated city for two years. My heart filled.”

— Erik Larson

248. “Late that afternoon, he devoted two quiet hours to his Old South, losing himself in another, more chivalrous age.”

— Erik Larson

249. “Torpedoes were expensive, and heavy. Each cost up to $ 5,000 – over $ 100,000 today – and weighed over three thousand pounds, twice the weight of a Ford Model T.”

— Erik Larson

250. “Messersmith, in a dispatch, observed that even smart, well-traveled Germans will “sit and calmly tell you the most extraordinary fairy tales.”

— Erik Larson