The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.
Herbert ButterfieldConcerning alchemy it is more difficult to discover the actual state of things, in that the historians who specialise in this field seem sometimes to be under the wrath of God themselves; for, like those who write of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy or on Spanish politics, they seem to become tinctured with the kind of lunacy they set out to describe.
Herbert ButterfieldPerhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something else.
Herbert Butterfield