English Historian Quotes

H. G. Wells

Edward Gibbon

Charles Kingsley

Thomas Gray

Charles Burney

Henry Thomas Buckle

Edward Augustus Freeman

No transformation in men's attitude to Nature — in their "common sense" — has been more profound than the change in perspective brought about by the discovery of the past. Rather than take this discovery for granted, it is almost preferable to exaggerate its significance.

Few things reveal more about political leaders and their systems than the manner of their downfall,

I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer.

Francis William Newman

With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common.

History is past politics, and politics is present history.

Edward Augustus Freeman

From the point of view of our discussion, the book as a response to political and literary circumstances, its origin belongs to the autumn and winter of 1678-80, exactly a decade earlier than it is traditionally supposed to have been written. Two Treatises is an Exclusion Tract, not a Revolution Pamphlet.

The Normans are a race inured to war, and can hardly live without it, fierce in rushing against the enemy, and, where force fails of success, ready to use stratagem, or corrupt by bribery.

William of Malmesbury

Froude informs the Scottish youth
That parsons do not care for truth.
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries
History is a pack of lies.
What cause for judgements so malign?
A brief reflection solves the mystery—
Froude believes Kingsley a divine,
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.

He soon made his name as a distinctly awkward fast left-arm bowler whose pounding run to the wicket was filled with menace.

So great was the attempt to assay the erection of this large and laborious Theatre, whose only platform might well have expected the readiest hand of the best artist, that even in the entrance of the first draught, as one altogether discouraged, I found myself far unfit and unfurnished both of matter and means, either to build, or to beautifie so stately a project.

It is my considered opinion that the sweetest relief from suffering and the best comfort in affliction that this world affords are to be found almost entirely in the study of literature, and so I believe that the splendor of historical writing is to be cherished with the greatest delight and given the pre-eminent and most glorious position.

Henry of Huntingdon

People who cannot think in an orderly way are apt to suppose themselves more imaginative than others.

George Albert Wells

The tolerant man has decided opinions, but recognises the process by which he reaches them, and keeps before himself the truth that they can only be profitably spread by repeating in the case of others a similar process to that through which he passed himself. He always keeps in view the hope of spreading his own opinions, but he endeavours to do so by producing conviction. He is virtuous, not because he puts his own opinions out of sight, nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own, but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not anyone else hold them with less reality

Mandell Creighton

If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you.

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great, the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefit.

Henry Thomas Buckle

Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn;
Thou our mortal griefs hast borne;
Thou hast shed the human tear;
Jesus, Son of Mary, hear!

Henry Hart Milman

A man hath riches. Whence came they, and whither go they? for this is the way to form a judgment of the esteem which they and their possessor deserve. If they have been acquired by fraud or violence, if they make him proud and vain, if they minister to luxury and intemperance, if they are avariciously hoarded up and applied to no proper use, the possessor becomes odious and contemptible.

Historical research of the truly scholastic kind is not connected with human beings at all. It is a pure study, like higher mathematics.

Veronica Wedgwood

With the fall of the empire, Art, Philosophy and decent drains all vanished from the West.

Bryan Ward-Perkins

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

The human mind is still something of a troglodyte. Expelled from one falling cavern, its first thought is to find another.

The procession from Newgate to Tyburn used to pass along Broad Street, and halt at the great gate of the hospital, in order that the condemned man might take his last draught of ale on earth.

Marshal thy notions into a handsome method - One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untowardly flapping and hanging about his shoulders.

Natural Science is a subject which a man cannot learn by paying for teachers. He must teach it himself, by patient observation, by patient common sense.

Charles Kingsley

This being 1962, no one thought it odd to have a mime program on radio.