The sea has become the land, in that it is now the usual medium of transit: not barrier but corridor

The discovery of the sea roads necessitated a radical re-imagining of the history of Europe. Try it yourself, now. Invert the mental map you have of Britain, Ireland and western Europe. Turn it inside out. Blank out the land interiors of these countries - consider them featureless, as you might have previously considered the sea. Instead, populate the western and northern eaters with paths and tracks: a travel system that joins port to port, island to island, headland to headland,  river mouth to river mouth. The sea has become the land, in that it is now the usual medium of transit: not barrier but corridor.

R. MacFarlane, The Old Ways (2012), 92-3

One does not advertise ideas as though they were laxatives or toothpaste

'One does not advertise ideas as though they were laxatives or toothpaste,' said the Emperor Karl, last of the Hapsburg Emperors of Austria-Hungary - a mistaken opinion which was one of the contributory causes of his own downfall and the disintegration of an empire which had endured (in various forms) for a millennium.

L. Hughes - Hallet, The Pike (2013), 382

And the newspapers someone dares to be happy because there were no human victims!

He [Nietzsche] was an aesthete, and not only in a green-carnation-wearing, stained-glass fancying sense of the word. He was one who valued beauty far higher than justice or human kindness, D'Annunzio would respond in the same spirit to the collapse of the campanile in Venice's Piazza San Marco in 1902.He was prostrated by grief, weeping, and pacing from room to room all day, unable to work. 'And the newspapers someone dares to be happy because there were no human victims!' To him the pain and death of his fellow beings would have been insignificant, by comparison with the loss of an harmonious architectural ensemble. 'Innumerable human victims would not be enough to compensate.'

L. Hughes - Hallet, The Pike (2013), 237

It is, he claims, the battle yell of Achilles

Twelve days earlier,  d'Annunzio, ever attentive to the ritual of warfare,  has taught his squadron a new battle cry. Instead of the 'Ip, Ip, Ip, Urrah!' which he finds crude and barbarous,  he has ordered them to shout the Greek: 'Eia, Eia, Eia, Alala!' It is, he claims, the battle yell of Achilles.

L. Hughes-Hallet, The Pike (2013), 38

The only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes

Père Tellier,a Jesuit who came to be loathed so much that he was perhaps chiefly responsible for the expulsion of his Order from France. A sort of Rasputin, with ardent, black eyes in a false, terrible face, ignorant and wildly ambitious, he was a peasant and boasted of it to the King, who was unimpressed since in his eyes the peasantry and the bourgeoisie rated exactly the same - the only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes.

N. Mitford, The Sun King (1966), 222-223

He had three further reasons for disliking the Dutch: the republicanism which seemed ingrained in their character, their Protestantism and their pamphlets

Co-operation with the Dutch did occur to Louis. he offered his daughter Marie-Anne to be the wife of William of Orange and received a humiliating rebuff. William said that in his family one married the legitimate daughters of kings, not their bastards. ... Louis XIV, always touchy on the subject of his illegitimate family, never forgave William the insult. He had three further reasons for disliking the Dutch: the republicanism which seemed ingrained in their character, their Protestantism and their pamphlets. His own press was strictly censored, but disagreeable observations on himself, his policy and his family never stopped coming off the printing presses of The Hague and Amsterdam.

N. Mitford, The Sun King (1966), 19