Francis Parkman - Character Quotes

3 Sourced Quotes

View all Francis Parkman Quotes

In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,—the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.

Francis Parkman

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

Francis Parkman

A true hero, after the chivalrous mediaeval type, his [Champlain's] character was dashed largely with the spirit of romance. Though earnest, sagacious, and penetrating, he leaned to the marvellous; and the faith which was the life of his hard career was somewhat prone to overstep the bounds of reason and invade the domain of fancy.

Francis Parkman