What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.

We are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.