To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
Those who weep for the happy periods they encounter in history acknowledge what they want: not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.[Ceux qui pleurent après les sociétés heureuses qu’ils rencontrent dans l’histoire avouent ce qu’ils désirent: non pas l’allégement de la misère, mais son silence.]
There is a history in all men’s lives.
The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the business mind.
The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
The history books do not remember the men who almost achieved greatness.
The historian’s duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.
Poetry is written with tears, novels with blood, and history with invisible ink.
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
