Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers. – Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship
People think too historically. They are always living half in a cemetery. – Aristide Briand
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books. – Thomas Carlyle, Life of Frederick the Great
Sin writes histories, goodness is silent. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Table – Talk
[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity. – Robert S. Lynd
History begins in novel and ends in essay. – Thomas Babington Macaulay
[W]hen a historian enters into metaphysics he has gone to a far country from whose bourne he will never return a historian. – Shailer Mathews, The Spiritual Interpretation of History
It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right. – Thomas Carlyle
[T]he Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past. – Thomas Carlyle, Characteristics
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. – Mary McCarthy, On the Contrary
What is the fire in our belly but the eternal flame of a thousand ancestors. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances. – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
The writing of histories – as Goethe once noted – is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past…. The writing of history liberates us from history. – Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. – Leo Tolstoy
The challenge of history is to recover the past and introduce it to the present. – David Thelen
If you go back through 2000 years, I guess luck, Marx, and God have made history, the three of them together. – Theodore White
Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman. – George Santayana, The Life of Reason
The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history. – Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History
History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes. – Paul Eldridge, Maxims for a Modern Man
