Most of the people who have ever lived have been almost entirely inarticulate, and we know nothing about them.
Jan 062015
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Nov 072014
History is not progress; yet without the idea of progress there can be no history.
Nov 052014
Civilization has always existed only in enclaves, and whoever would universalize it is its unwitting enemy.
Oct 022014
History is apocryphal.
Oct 012014
Chivalry is moribund, but every war kindles a recrudescence.
Sep 302014
Each photograph in the album is a tiny buttress of age with youth, of a ruined present with a glorious past.
Sep 242014
Many historical figures supposed to be influential are chiefly so among the cataloguers of influence.
Sep 232014
People throughout history have died mostly of being in the way.
Sep 222014
The historical imagination is the recognition that then was someone else’s now.
Sep 112014
Two hundred years ago to call a man a poet implied that he was a god; today it implies that he is a fool.