Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.