Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. – Aristotle

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books. – Thomas Carlyle, Life of Frederick the Great

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