Good writing is almost the concomitant of good history. Literature and history were joined long since by the powers which shaped the human brain; we cannot put them asunder.

A nation does not create the historians it deserves; the historians are far more likely to create the nation.

History being the record of human action is a richly variegated material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern.

Without the imaginative insight which goes with creative literature, history cannot be intelligibly written.

Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope, not of despair.

The individual - stupendous and beautiful paradox - is at once infinitesimal dust and the cause of all things.

History, in spite of the occasional protest of historians, will always be used in a general way as a collection of political and moral precedents.