We are literally children of the earth, and removed from her our spirits wither or run to various forms of insanity. Unless we can refresh ourselves at least by intermittent contact with nature, we grow awry.

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out

If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. When body and mind are out of gear (and those twin parts of me live at such close quarters that the one always catches melancholy from the other) I know that I shall have only to call in my doctors and I shall be well again.

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

And how fascinating history is - the long, variegated pageant of man's still continuing evolution of this strange planet, so much the most interesting of all the myriads of spinners through space.