If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history. – Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary

[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity. – Robert S. Lynd

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust? – Washington Irving, The Sketch Book: Westminster Abbey

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history Рits mass appeal. РJos̩ Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason