International politics, by and large, are a depressing study.

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.

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.

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

It should be the historian's business not to belittle but to illuminate the greatness of man's spirit.

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 passion there might be no errors, but without passion there would certainly be no history.