"Historian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these good, heroic, sweet characters. We need not read novels to find heroes. They are living all around us. We are talking to them every day. They pass us on the street, they sit by us in the church and hall. There is no historian to write of them, only a book of remembrance in heaven, where all their ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... of Grant's entry is given by the scholarly historian of Windsor, Dr. Stiles, who says in his history of ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... the case, we shall then be in a position to inquire whether modern discoveries afford us any really valuable light, and can assist us to form a somewhat more extended and accurate idea of the processes described by the sacred historian. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... we now have formidable competitors outside. McClure's Magazine, the American Magazine, Collier's Weekly, and, in its fashion, the World's Work, constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words like these: "By the middle of the twentieth century the higher institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in the United States. But the mission ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... tell their stories and play their parts under the cover of that unsuggestive title; so that the curious reader of little faith shall have difficulty if he resolves to discover the whereabouts of the village and to inquire respecting the author's claim to credibility as a historian. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... antagonists, on all the difficult subjects of law, political science, and history involved in the Constitution of the United States,—while showing at the same time every quality of good generalship as a tactician and as a party leader. "There has been, I am aware," says an eminent historian of the Constitution, "a modern scepticism concerning Patrick Henry's abilities; but I cannot share it.... The manner in which he carried on the opposition to the Constitution in the convention of Virginia, for nearly a whole month, shows that he possessed other powers ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Josephus, the learned Jewish historian, states that the Egyptians had two hundred thousand musicians playing at the dedication of the Temple of Solomon. This structure was of most wonderfully immense dimensions: and it may have been that this enormous body of performers ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... a reply, after giving her a reproachful glance by which she was as much moved as by his silent obedience. She put out her foot with a more gracious air, and thrust it into the slipper. To be a correct historian, we must admit that this time she left it in the hands which softly pressed it longer than was strictly necessary. When Octave had fastened it with skill but with no haste, he bent his head and pressed his lips to the openwork ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Catiline the type of almost every great conspirator, he raised his eyes and gazed on vacancy, calling up with little labour, as it were, a substantial image to his mind's eye of him whom the great historian had displayed. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... concentrated and individual view, has pictured some of the monotony of its half-grown society, the gloom of its scenery, and the painful realities of its early penal systems. Reputed only as a novelist, he possessed besides imagination some of the higher qualities of the critical historian. And had his life been prolonged, he might almost have done for Australian city life what Thackeray did for the London of seventy years ago. He could, at least, have written a novel of manners that would have credited the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... years, and, when he refused to give up his records, Smith and Rigdon addressed a letter to him,* in connection with his dismissal, which said that his notes required correction by them before publication, "knowing your incompetency as a historian, that writings coming from your pen could not be put to press without our correcting them, or else the church must suffer reproach. Indeed, sir, we never supposed you capable of writing a history." Why the Lord did not consult Smith and Rigdon before making this appointment ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... hypothetical history of creation, beginning, as the title-pages say, at the earliest period, and coming down to the present day. It is not quite so authentic as that of Moses, nor is it written with such an air of simplicity and confidence as the narrative of the Jewish historian; but it is much longer, and goes into a far greater variety of interesting particulars. It contradicts the Jewish cosmogony in a few particulars, and is at variance with probability and the ordinary laws of human reasoning in many others. But the ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... against attempting to continue down to the outbreak of the war (October 11th) the historical sketch given in Chapters II to XII. The materials for the historian are still scanty and imperfect, leaving him with data scarcely sufficient for judging the intention and motives with which some things were done. Round the acts and words of the representatives of the three governments concerned, there rages such a storm ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... internal improvement and railroad legislation began, with potent nationalizing effects. Over internal improvements occurred great debates, in which grave constitutional questions were discussed. Sectional groupings appear in the votes, profoundly significant for the historian. Loose construction increased as the nation marched westward.[25:1] But the West was not content with bringing the farm to the factory. Under the lead of Clay—"Harry of the West"—protective tariffs were passed, with ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... respect to the exploration of America, I admit that my tale turns essentially upon the explorers of it. My business as a writer of tales has been to explore them rather than Wineland the Good. I have been more interested in Gudrid's husbands and babies than I had need to be as an historian. I am sure the tale is none the worse for it—and anyhow I can't help it. If I read of a woman called Gudrid, and a handsome woman at that, I am bound to know pretty soon what colour her hair was, and how she twisted it up. If I hear ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... free myself from the thought of this Medea da Carpi. In my walks, my mornings in the Archives, my solitary evenings, I catch myself thinking over the woman. Am I turning novelist instead of historian? And still it seems to me that I understand her so well; so much better than my facts warrant. First, we must put aside all pedantic modern ideas of right and wrong. Right and wrong in a century of violence and treachery does not exist, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil;—the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'"—Journal, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1898, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... said he in a voice which was not quite English and not quite American, but was altogether mellow and pleasing. "You are the historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you've never had such a story as that pass through your hands before, and I'll lay my last dollar on that. Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you can't miss the public so long as you have those. I've been cooped up two days, and ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... this spot, from the fact, which probably is not generally known, except to the professed historian, that the distinguished patriot TIMOTHY PICKERING took up his abode in the valley of Wyoming, attracted no doubt by its unrivalled beauties, to which he was first introduced during a military campaign, but which he afterward contemplated, on the return of peace, with an eye capable ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... small for its historian to enter into any controversy upon the measures taken for the defence of the St. Quentin front. Whatever else the Oxfords could have done would have had no effect upon the main issues of this great attack. But for the mist the German onslaught, delivered in the preponderance of four to one, would ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... historian says, "were characterised by an extraordinary activity in all departments of trade and commerce. Mr Huskisson, a minister who was a high authority on commercial matters, originated several important measures, especially those relating to the repeal of all duties on goods passing between Great ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... the Tropes given by Sextus and Diogenes. The former gives them not only as an orator, but as one who feels that he is defending his own cause, and the school of which he is the leader, against mortal enemies, while Diogenes relates them as an historian. ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... Ireland by refugees from Troy, and of the exploits of Arthur and the prophesies of Merlin. This work, therefore, contains some of the "germs of fables which expanded into Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of Britain, which was written in Latin some time before 1147," although this historian claims to derive his information from an ancient British book of which ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... they knew it was wanted. In this way we desire that our little book should take "NOTES," and be a medley of all that men are doing—that the Notes of the writer and the reader, whatever be the subject-matter of his studies, of the antiquary, and the artist, the man of science, the historian, the herald, and the genealogist, in short, Notes relating to all subjects but such as are, in popular discourse, termed either political or polemical, should meet in our columns in such juxta-position, as ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... described. A certain facetious writer, who has published his "Walks through Bath," alluding to this practice, speaks of it as having been prohibited in the fifteenth century. How long such prohibition, if it ever took place, continued, it is not for me to know; but if the Bath peripatetic historian had made it his business to have seen what he has described, he would have found, that the practice of bathing males and females together in puris naturalibus was still continued in high perfection, in spite of the puritans, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of this bastile of the brain the guards are Pride, Pretense, Greed, Gluttony, Selfishness. Increase human efficiency and you set the captives free. "The Teutonic tribes have captured the world because of their efficiency," says Lecky the historian. He then adds that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... they stayed in Danieli's Hotel, on the Riva dei Schiavoni, and began by studying picturesque canal-life. Mr. Boxall, R.A., and Mrs. Jameson, the historian of Sacred and Legendary Art, were their companions. Another old friend, Joseph Severn, had in 1843 gained one of the prizes at the Westminster Hall Cartoons Competition; and a letter from Ruskin, referring to the work there, shows how he still pondered on the subject that had been haunting ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... very mad presumption to believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, for other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work? To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. An historian of hearts is not an historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he may be, since his aim is to reach the very fount of laughter and tears. The sight of human affairs deserves admiration ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... have ever been outraged, can better merit a separate chapter in the private history of German manners or social life than this unparalleled case. And, on the other hand, no one can put in a better claim to be the historian than myself. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... equally amusing, and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the artist, whom you recognise as no mean critic of the looks and manners of men; ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word I can say shall teach our new citizens to regard with reverent respect the early pioneers who laid the foundations of the glory, prosperity and beauty of the California of to-day, I shall have done all I hope to, and the historian of another half century may do them justice, and give to them their ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... James, a British historian,[A] in his account of the battle of the Thames, makes the following remarks upon the character and ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles have hitherto hampered the study of Berber origins, but it seems clear that from the earliest historic times they were a mixed race, and the ethnologist who attempts to define them is faced by the same problem as the historian of modern America who should try to find the racial definition of an "American." For centuries, for ages, North Africa has been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world. When at length it occurred ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... established by parliament, held the first year of his reign. In the act for which purpose, the parliament seems to have copied the caution of their predecessors in the reign of Henry IV; and therefore (as lord Bacon the historian of this reign observes) carefully avoided any recognition of Henry VII's right, which indeed was none at all; and the king would not have it by way of new law or ordinance, whereby a right might seem to be created ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... all Americans to read it carefully, and judge for themselves if 'the future historian of our war,' of whom we have heard so much, be not already arrived in the Comte de ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... indescribably filthy and disgusting; nor were the habits of the occupants much more cleanly. In other respects, they were equally indecorous and offensive. "It is with no small concern," writes an anonymous historian of Newgate, "that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men not only in respect to their mode of living, but more especially as to their conversation, which, to their great shame, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an hypothetical person whom Sir W. Scott makes use of to introduce some of his novels by means of prefatory letters. The word is a synonym for a dull, prosy, plodding historian, with great show of learning, but ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... appeared, that a series of important facts, tending to throw a strong light on the internal state of France, during the most important period of the Revolution, could neither prove uninteresting to the general reader, nor indifferent to the future historian of that momentous epoch; and I conceived, that the opposite and judicious reflections of a well-formed and well-cultivated mind, naturally arising out of events within the immediate scope of its own observation, could not in the smallest degree diminish ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... murdered to extinction out of doors—flashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight. It was then that the historian produced his manuscript, which he had prepared, he said, with a view to publication. His delivery of the story having concluded as aforesaid, the speaker expressed his hope that the constraint of the weather, and the paucity of ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... hundred and thirty bishops who in succession reigned here ended—a century back, in the time of the Revolution—in a veritable lurid flame; yet with, I think, a touch of agonized human nature too. The church historian can see only the diabolical side of the situation; and in a horror-struck way tells how that last Bishop, "being overcome by the devil, abjured the episcopacy; with his own hands destroyed the insignia ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... called to her Father's house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have the proffered welcome more unstinted. There are still stray remnants of the old intolerant distrust. It is still possible for even a French historian of the Church to enumerate among the articles cast upon Savonarola's famous pile, poesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des modernes, livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ne nommer que les plus connus, ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... age-worn hopes permitted it. The day has passed for it now; there is no time left to me. No matter: let us talk chemistry once more, for a little while; and, for want of something better, let us revive old memories. If the historian, now and again, takes a small place in the story of his animals, the reader will kindly excuse him: old age is prone to these reminiscences, the bloom ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... to accept a salary which the negligence of his pupil would not allow him to requite. In his clerical tenets he was high: in his judgment of others he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece was not drawn from the ignorant historian of her republics; [Note: It is really a disgrace to the University, that any of its colleges should accept as a reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous bigot who has bequeathed to us, in his History of Greece, the masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hosmer, Hecker, Burton, Leach and Allen had gone; as had also the Curtis brothers, George and Burrill, the Bancroft boys, sons of the historian, and Barlow (since General Barlow)—all pupils; as well as some of the ladies—Miss Dora Gannett, niece of Rev. Ezra S. Gannett, Miss Georgianna Bruce, (afterwards Mrs. Kirby), Miss Allen, Miss Sarah Stearns; and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... and Clive found him environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in the little britzska. I wonder whether the window at the Hotel de Hollande saw him go? There are some curtains behind which no historian, however prying, is allowed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rights as the first occupant. Before my arrival the two plane-trees were yours without reserve; it is I who have intruded, have thrust myself into their shade. I confess it: yet muffle your cymbals, moderate your arpeggi, for the sake of your historian! The truth rejects what the fabulist tells us as an absurd invention. That there are sometimes dealings between the Cigale and the Ant is perfectly correct; but these dealings are the reverse of those described in the fable. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... bath, would in time attain a pitch of delicacy and sensitiveness such as would in some measure justify the seemingly extravagant statements of their poetical admirers, of which the following anecdote (quoted by Ibn Khellikan from the historian Et Teberi) is a fair specimen. Ardeshir ibn Babek (Artaxerxes I.), the first Sassanian King of Persia (A.D. 226-242), having long unsuccessfully besieged El Hedr, a strong city of Mesopotamia belonging to the petty ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... merit belongs to that original phrase in Theophrastus; to me, at least, from the closeness of its analogy, it seems to have a peculiar expressiveness, though Caecilius censures it, without telling us why. "Philip," says the historian, "showed a marvellous alacrity in taking doses of trouble."[1] We see from this that the most homely language is sometimes far more vivid than the most ornamental, being recognised at once as the language of common life, and gaining immediate currency by its familiarity. ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... informs us, that when Fredegonde, wife of Chilperic, gave the hand of her daughter Rigouthe to the son of the Gothic king, fifty chariots were required to carry away all the valuable objects which composed the princess's dower. A strange family scene, related by the same historian, gives us an idea of the private habits of the court of that terrible queen of the Franks. "The mother and daughter had frequent quarrels, which sometimes ended in the most violent encounters. Fredegonde ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... He assured my aunt that German ladies were most agreeable, cultivated persons, extremely domesticated, retiring; the encomiums of the Roman historian were as well deserved by them in the present day as they had been in the past; decidedly, on the whole, Peterborough would call them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by the historian of the Peninsular War, illustrative of the personal influence exercised by a great commander over his followers. The British army lay at Sauroren, before which Soult was advancing, prepared to attack, in force. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... satisfied with this work, nor with the character of "Lionel Lincoln," whose lack of commanding interest makes "Job," his poor half-witted brother and son of "Abigail,"—a tenant of the old warehouse,—the real hero of the book. Of its author, Bancroft the historian wrote: "He has described the battle of Bunker's Hill better than it has ever been described in any other work." Another high authority says: "'Lionel Lincoln' certainly gives spirited battlepieces—notably ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Aristeides wrote lewd stories called Milesiaca, of which there were several books. They were translated into Latin by the historian L. Cornelius Sisenna, a contemporary of Sulla. It is not said whether the original or the translation formed a part of the camp furniture of this unworthy Roman soldier. The work of Aristeides was known to Ovidius (Tristia, ii. 413, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... said the Hungarian, "who makes the gypsies speak Roth-Welsch, the dialect of thieves; a pretty historian, who couples ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... they were overtaken by the cavalcade of Antipater. The prince, summoned by Herod, was now returning, under royal banners, to receive his inheritance of glory and power. A letter had started him, which, according to the great historian of that time, was warm with affectionate greeting. Antipater, also, was to take ship for Judea. He had learned of the departure of Appius and Arria, and had pushed his horses to the limit of their speed in order to overtake them. When he first saw the troop ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... Ramayana, one of the oldest epics in existence. In the Raja-Tarangini also, an historical chronicle which may be regarded as the Mahawanso of Kashmir, very early accounts of Ceylon are contained, and the historian records that the King Megavahana, who, according to the chronology of Troyer, reigned A.D. 24, made an expedition to Ceylon for the purpose of extending Buddhism, and visited Adam's Peak, where he had an interview with the native sovereign.—Raja-Tarangini, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... as soon as he had got into the room. 'I like to hear you say that,' I said, 'because it does n't seem to me that you have been at all wise.' 'You are cleverness, kindness, tact, in the most perfect form!' he went on. As a veracious historian I am bound to tell you that he paid me a bushel of compliments, and thanked me in the most flattering terms for my having let him bore me so for a week. 'You have not bored me,' I said; 'you have interested me.' 'Yes,' he cried, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... practice from copious blood-letting to the dosing of sailors with concoctions of mysterious make. Not improbably Hebert set out with no intention to remain in America; but he found Port Royal to his liking, and there the historian Lescarbot soon found him not only 'sowing corn and planting vines,' but apparently 'taking great pleasure in the cultivation of the soil.' All this in a colony which comprised five persons, namely, two Jesuit fathers and their servant, ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... Athanasius wanted it put into the creed, but the bishops in general saw no need of this. A heresy so easily overcome could not be very dangerous. There were only half a dozen Arians left in the council, and too precise a definition might lead to dangers on the Sabellian side. At this point the historian Eusebius came forward. Though neither a great man nor a clear thinker, he was the most learned student of the East. He had been a confessor in the persecution, and now occupied an important see, and stood high in the Emperor's favour. With ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. 'Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, 'but ye shall make less stir in our realm than ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of Arran. My lord of Ossory was no less remarkable for his beauty than famous for his accomplishments: he rode and played tennis to perfection, performed upon the lute to entrancement, and danced to the admiration of the court; he was moreover a good historian, and well versed in chronicles of romance. No less was the Earl of Arran proficient in qualifications befitting his birth, and gifted with attributes ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... adjustment, know of our own experience how great the difficulties can be. We know that they are not difficulties peculiar to any continent or any Nation. Our own Revolutionary War left behind it, in the words of one American historian, "an eddy of lawlessness and disregard of human life." There were separatist movements of one kind or another in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maine. There were insurrections, open or threatened, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... Scott, who cannot be regarded as an impartial historian of the Napoleonic regime, does not, in his unfortunate "Life of Napoleon," produce one single fact or argument that will exculpate the British Government of that time from having violated every humane ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... have not yet introduced Arthur. He is neither brother, cousin, nor fiance, but bound to us by almost brotherly ties, having been our playmate when we were little children; and after the death of his parents (our eminent historian Richard Hildreth, and his gifted artist wife), he became mamma's ward, and was our constant companion in Italy and France. Arthur has come on from Cambridge, where he has just taken his degree as a lawyer, to make us ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... graces aside for the unmistakable ledger balance of the counting-house. This new order of things had been a long time in process, when, in the first year of this century, a distinguished English social historian, the late The Right Honorable G.W.E. Russell, wrote: "Probably in all ages of history men have liked money, but a hundred years ago they did not talk about it in society.... Birth, breeding, rank, accomplishments, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... assemblies. His popularity in Germany was openly manifested. At any gathering he was surrounded by a brilliant company, eager to do him honor. He was recognized whenever he appeared on the street, and saluted, though in his notes he says he was sometimes mistaken for the historian Mommsen, whom he resembled in hair and features. His books were displayed for sale everywhere, and a special cheap edition of them was issued at a few cents ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... accented on the last syllable. Of traveller authors, he preferred "the accurate Burckhardt." He read with delight Boswell's Johnson, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, Renan's Life of Jesus, Gibbon, whom he calls "our great historian" [512] and the poems of Coleridge. At Cowper he never lost an opportunity of girding, both on account of his Slave Ballads ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... slavery was regarded without a particle of that deep abhorrence which the possession of man by man excites in us now. In the ninth and tenth centuries the slave trade was the most profitable branch of the commerce that was carried on in the Mediterranean. The historian tells us that, even so late as this, slaves were the principal article of European export to Africa, Syria, and Egypt, in payment for the produce of the East which was brought from those countries. It was the crumbling of the old social system which, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... not alter the Slav character of the country. It is not now the question as to whether Venice deserved or did not deserve well of Dalmatia, but "the truth is," says M. Emile Haumant,[23] the learned and impartial French historian, "the truth is that when Marmont's Frenchmen arrived they found the Slav language everywhere, the Italian by its side on the islands and the coast, Italian customs and culture in the towns, and also the lively ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... When the competent historian shall at last undertake a thoughtful work upon our great struggle, there can be little doubt that he will rank among the primary causes of the Confederacy's dissolution the grave errors of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... besides no good result can be expected from what is contrary to the law of nature and of nature's God. It was to punish sins of the flesh that the Deluge was sent, which destroyed nearly the whole human race. "All flesh had corrupted its way," says the sacred historian. It was to punish unlawful indulgence of lust that Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by fire from heaven; and the memory of these guilty cities is preserved in the very name of Sodomy. Onan, as the same sacred volume relates (Gen. xxxviii), performed the marriage act in a manner to ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... over the average student, however deeply he may have studied. These volumes, moreover, afford me a long sought opportunity of noticing practices and customs which interest all mankind and which "Society" will not hear mentioned. Grate, the historian, and Thackeray, the novelist, both lamented that the begueulerie of their countrymen condemned them to keep silence where publicity was required; and that they could not even claim the partial licence of a Fielding and a Smollett. Hence ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... profit are precious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It was so in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this its worst amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian of antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears in soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of man much shorter than it is, would, I am satisfied, find the surest recipe for increasing the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... which her years of folly (for such at the best they had been) had so gravely endangered. Over the remainder of her vagrant life, with its restless flittings, and its indiscretions, marked by spying eyes, we must pass to that February morning in 1820 when, to quote a historian, "the Princess had scarcely reached her hotel (at Florence) when her faithful major-domo, John Jacob Sicard, appeared before her, accompanied by two noblemen, and in a voice full of emotion announced, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... creation of the world, 4004 B. C., the history of our first parents, their deviation from virtue, and the evil consequences that ensued. To Adam and Eve were born sons and daughters. The only three mentioned by name, are Cain, Abel and Seth, and the sacred historian has chiefly confined himself to the posterity of Seth, from whom Noah descended: in his time mankind became very wicked, and to punish them, God sent a violent rain upon the earth which caused a general deluge, and all the inhabitants ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... by the learned historian of Christianity, E. de Pressense, in his "Histoire du Dogme" (Paris, 1869), under the heading "Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia," may serve as an illustration of the complete absence of anything like a definition of what is ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... which accompanied Charles V. on his entry to and exit from Nuremberg, flying above the royal procession. But, since Muller died in 1436 and Charles was born in 1500, Muller may be ruled out from among the pioneers of mechanical flight, and it may be concluded that the historian of this event got ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... art at first powerfully affected that of Italy, the latter in the end reacted on the former, and these two influences crossed and recrossed in ways that demand the closest scrutiny of the analytical historian. But at this particular period that which immediately concerns us is the manner in which Italian musical art defined itself. The secret of the differentiation already mentioned must be sought in the powerful feeling of Gothic art for organization. Gothic architecture ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... of these things cannot be written here; it will fill many volumes. Here an attempt has been made to sketch merely in its broadest outlines some of the activities of British sailors during the greatest of wars. Whatever the future historian will say of the part they bore he will not minimize it, for on this pivot the whole matter turned, on this axis the great circle of the war revolved. He will affirm that, though in respect of numbers almost negligible compared with the soldiers who fought in the long series ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... faithful historian, I must give my readers the story of a certain adventure in which were involved the honour and happiness of one of the most charming women in Italy, who would have been unhappy if I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Etesian winds into the southern parts and into Egypt, from whence violent showers are poured; and by this means the fens of Egypt are filled with water, and the river Nile hath its inundation. Herodotus the historian, that the waters of the Nile receive from their fountain an equal portion of water in winter and in summer; but in winter the water appears less, because the sun, making its approach nearer to Egypt, draws up the rivers of that country into exhalation. Ephorus the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of feudal independence; it was the cause of the great and not of the people, who were only dragged into the struggle by the former. Afterwards the part was swallowed up in the whole, and no longer could any one be, like Warwick, a maker of kings. Shakspeare was as profound a historian as a poet; when we compare his Henry the Eighth with the preceding pieces, we see distinctly that the English nation during the long, peaceable, and economical reign of Henry VII., whether from the exhaustion which was the fruit of the civil wars, or from more general European ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Wimborne, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was perhaps willing enough to leave his birth unsettled, in hope, like Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might find him some illustrious alliance. He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... we have said it will be seen that the poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary. The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse—you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... crushing proximity. The second and third billows of misfortune are fast undulating on the tide of time, and will sweep over the home of Cassier, leaving it a miserable wreck, a theme for the sympathy and the moral of a historian's pen. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... were all so conspicuous. His pardoning the priests, whether they had been for him or against him, made every friend of religion incline to his favor. The same interposition in behalf of the poet's family and descendants spoke directly to the heart of every poet, orator, historian, and philosopher throughout the country, and tended to make all the lovers of literature his friends. His magnanimity, also, in deciding that one single friend of his in a family should save that family, instead of ordaining, as a more ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... broken syllables and languid movements of an invalid. The easily rendered, and too surely recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt at once to be real where all else had been false; and the historian of the gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... faithful to please his sitters: he was too truthful to flatter, even on canvas; and the wonder is that he achieved any popularity in this fantastic branch of his art. Allan Cunningham has said of him, that he regarded neither the historian's page, nor the poet's song. He was contented with the occurrences of the passing day, with the folly or the sin of the hour; yet to the garb and fashion of the moment, he adds story and sentiment for all time. It is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... historian, born at Luebeck, was professor at Goettingen; his principal work a History of the Church, written in Latin, and translated into English and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... he owed that simple and impassioned love of nature which never left him all through his life, and which made him so peculiarly susceptible to the spiritual influences of Wordsworth's poetry. He went to school at Charles Burney's academy at Hammersmith. Mr. Burney was the son of the historian of music, and the near kinsman of the artistic lad who was destined to turn out his most remarkable pupil. He seems to have been a man of a good deal of culture, and in after years Mr. Wainewright often spoke of him with much affection as a philosopher, an archaeologist, and an admirable ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... a University don and an historian. His works are distinguished by their brilliant style and the masterly manner in which he wields the English language—a power which was also manifested in his political speeches and proclamations. Mr. Wilson sprang into political and general fame when he was President of the University of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... "poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary," is, of course, from the romantic point of view, principally associated with El Dorado, and his quest of the magic and imaginary land of gold. It was for this reason ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... The historian of literature is bound to take account of this question of literary vogue, as it is highly significant of the temper of successive generations in any country. But it is of peculiar interest to the student of the literature produced in the United States. Is this literature ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... would not fail to acquire a ready facility in subscribing, with solemn attestations, professions which he violated without hesitation or regret. The Thirty-nine Articles were signed on matriculation, without any attempt to understand them. "Our venerable mother," says the great historian from whom we have already quoted, "had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference"; and these blended influences, which led Gibbon first to Rome, and then to skepticism, proved no doubt to the average mind a mere narcotic to all spiritual life. Gibbon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... imply the invention of the subject, for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian. With respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not generally interesting. It ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action or heroic suffering. There must be something either in the action or in the object ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... rather severely against the judge, and rather in favor of the historian, who played "the said poker" with such thoroughness that presently there appeared before him a ragged pile of currency and coin. Dunwody and Carlisle were losers, but finally Dunwody began to edge in upon the accumulated winnings ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... of communities, of philosophical ideals. These were great and high things, and his studies gave him an increased sense of their greatness and significance. But Hugh saw that he could neither be a historian nor a philosopher, but that his work must be of an individualistic type. He saw that the side of the world which appealed to himself was the subtle and mysterious essence of beauty—the beauty of nature, of art, of music, of comradeship, of relations with other souls. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... absent from the city, is near us in the palace upon the Palatine; but when he is here, it is more remote, in the enchanted gardens of Sallust. This spot, first ennobled by the presence of the great historian, to whose hand and eye of taste the chief beauties of the scene are to be traced, then afterward selected by Vespasian as an imperial villa, is now lately become the chosen retreat of Aurelian. It has indeed lost a part of its charms since it has been embraced, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... The historian of great events is always oppressed by the difficulty of tracing the silent, subtle influences, which in all communities precede and prepare the way for violent outbursts and uprisings. He may discover many causes and record them duly, but he will always be sensible that others ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... is full of organic particles capable of life and growth is now a matter of absolute certainty. It has long been a matter of speculation, but there is a great difference between a fact and a speculation. An eminent historian has recently deprecated the distinction which is conventionally drawn between science and knowledge, but, nevertheless, such a distinction is useful, and will continue to be drawn. A man's head may be filled with various things. His inclination may lead him, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... that impression been made before I was struck with something of the chivalrous courtesy of other times. In his conversation you would have found all that is most delightful in all his works—the combined talent and knowledge of the historian, novelist, antiquary, and poet. He recited poetry admirably, his whole face and figure kindling as he spoke: but whether talking, reading, or reciting, he never tired me, even with admiring; and it is curious that, in conversing with him, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... up as being much better than his age is always to be suspected," says a historian, "and Cato is perhaps the best specimen of the rugged hypocrite ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... is the palace of the ancient kings of Scotland; that is Holyrood, where many a sad scene has been enacted! The historian can here invoke many a royal shade; from those of the early Scottish kings to that of the unhappy Mary Stuart, and the French king, Charles X. When day breaks, however, Nell, this palace will not look so very gloomy. Holyrood, with its four embattled ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne |
