19th-century Historian Quotes

Such is the past career, present condition, and certain future of the Middle American. There are as many above him as below him, and especially as many below him as above him.

When he [the coyote] starts to move, it is with some deliberation. He prefers a dog-trot and often several shots from your rifle will not stir him into a run. He slips along easily and gracefully - a lean, hungrylooking wretch with all the insolence of a hoodlum and all the shrewdness of a thief.

But we have reached a turning-point. We must make a decision: shall we remain a child-like people, giving little thought to our Future, till someday we find that we have none?

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck
One of the world's greatest needs has ever been unboastful, unbiased history.

The surgeon who has performed scores of brilliant operations is less talked about than the one who has inadvertently killed a patient; the pharmacist who has carefully filled prescriptions for a lifetime remains obscure, but will gain publicity by a single oversight.

Otto Eisenschiml
Otto Eisenschiml
Science begins by giving names; it then reasons on those names. It shuts itself up in abstractions as in a dark room; sometimes a sudden perception, like a flash of lightning, discovers a corner of reality; then Night, darker than ever, resumes its sway.

Gabriel Hanotaux
Gabriel Hanotaux
When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable.

For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

Michael Rostovtzeff
Michael Rostovtzeff
Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined.

John Stevens Cabot Abbott
John Stevens Cabot Abbott
The itch of inquiry is ever vehement in him [the statistician], and he attaches himself to new questions as buoys made to float him into paradise.

The interplay of institutions is not... as perfect as one would have desired. The machinery creaks, its springs screech and the principles emerge badly cracked.

The evidence seems to show beyond question that our present species of plants have descended by gradual evolution from simpler and fewer species which formerly existed, and which in turn were evolved from still simpler and fewer kinds - back, it is possible, to a single kind which throve in remotest antiquity.

William Francis Ganong
William Francis Ganong
Science hangs in a void of nescience, a planet turning in the dark.

It is useful to ask oneself questions, but very dangerous to answer them.

Charles Seignobos
Charles Seignobos
A nation is a body of people who have done great things together in the past and hope to do great things together in the future.

The point in geometry is like the unit in arithmetic and the molecule in matter.

History is full of the dead weight of things which have escaped the control of the mind, yet drive man on with a blind force.

Science is often identified with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not merely knowledge, but also consciousness, that is, the skill of properly using knowledge.

Vasily Klyuchevsky
Vasily Klyuchevsky
We are always looking for metaphors in which to express our ideas of life, for our language is inadequate for all its complexities. Life is a labyrinth... Life is a machine... Life is a laboratory... It is but a metaphor. When we speak of ultimate things we can, maybe, speak only in metaphors. Life is a dance, a very elaborate and complex dance.

As soon as you begin to say We have always done things this way -- perhaps that might be a better way, conscious law-making is beginning. As soon as you begin to say We do things this way -- they do things that way -- what is to be done about it? men are beginning to feel towards justice, that resides between the endless jar of right and wrong.

At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.

Swift flies our time on pinions fleet, Like vapours on the breeze; The transient bliss we now call sweet, The passing moments seize. The gilded joy, the present hour, Soon wing themselves away; Departing like the fading flower That pleas'd us Yesterday.