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

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

the independence of the artist is one of the great safeguards of the freedom of the human spirit.

All normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.

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.

An educated man should know everything about something, and something about everything.

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.