The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.

We have more to learn today from the spectacle of a great man at a great moment than from any number of monographs on ancient wage levels.

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

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

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.

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.

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