Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.

Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.

History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no uncertainties, no horsing around. It always disturbed me how many biographers never gave their subjects a chance to eat. You can tell a lot about people by how they eat, what they eat, and what kind of table manners they have.

I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of the most fulfilling pleasures of life are to be found in work - found in work you love to do, work you want to do, work that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.

To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?