For the truth is that men do not desire to be the Common Man any more than they are the Common Man. They need greatness in others and the occasion to discover the greatness in themselves.

For the truth is that men do not desire to be the Common Man any more than they are the Common Man. They need greatness in others and the occasion to discover the greatness in themselves.

My own varying estimates of the facts themselves, as the years passed, showed me too clearly how much of history must always rest in the eye of the beholder; our deductions are so often different it is impossible they should always be right.

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

General knowledge may have to be slight or even amateurish knowledge, but it is none the less useful, and we discourage it at our peril.

historical research of the truly scholastic kind is not connected with human beings at all. It is a pure study, like higher mathematics.

For the company of the great is good company as Shakespeare understood it, as Plutarch understood it. The past remains the source from which example and precept can still be drawn.