Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

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

somewhere about the eighteenth century, history tacitly replaced religion as the school of public morals.

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

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.

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.

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.