Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material.

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.