To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.