It was not by gentle sweetness and self-abnegation that order was brought out of chaos; it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid attention to detail, by ceaseless labor, by the fixed det...
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
Discretion is not the better part of biography.
If this is dying I don't think much of it.
The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace...
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion.
There was hardly an eminent writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of the Conciergerie or the Bastille.
For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian──ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.
A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile
It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.
