When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious. – Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it. – Jose Ortega y Gasset

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. – Aristotle