Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!

History is the zoology of the human race.

The real genres: good and bad.

How great seems human progress when we consider where it began, and how insignificant, when we contemplate the goals for which itstrives.

He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.