It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead. – E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art. – V. S. Naipaul

Histories used often to be stories: the fashion now is to leave out the story. Our histories are stall-fed: the facts are absorbed by the reflexions, as the meat is sometimes by the fat. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers