History is still in large measure poetry to me.

The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.

History is still in large measure poetry to me.

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

There might be a fact of the greatest significance reported by Thucydides which will only be recognized as such a hundred years from now.

Only a fairy tale calls a constant condition 'happiness'.

The more recently power has originated, the less it can remain stationary - first because those who created it have become accustomed to rapid further movement and because they are and will be innovators per se; secondly, because the forces aroused or subdued by them can be employed only through further acts.