Part 44

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.--Gibbon.

We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.--Johnson.

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.--Joubert.

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult,--it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it; and in historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.--Froude.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror which merely reflects objects, but of the judge who sees, listens, and decides.--Lamartine.

In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.--Macaulay.

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.--Washington Irving.

History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.--Macaulay.

Violent natures make history. The instruments they use almost always kill. Religion and philosophy have their vestments covered with innocent blood.--X. Doudan.

Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with immortality.--Bancroft.

What history is not richer, does not contain far more, than they by whom it is enacted, the present witnesses! What mortal understandeth his way?--Jacobi.

He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.--Macaulay.

~Home.~--Home is the grandest of all institutions.--Spurgeon.

The first sure symptom of a mind in health is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.--Young.

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.--George Eliot.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.--Payne.

Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things; but don't scruple freedom in brightening home. Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are a sight day by day, and make life blither.--Charles Buxton.

Home is the seminary of all other institutions.--Chapin.

~Honesty.~--If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.--Johnson.

Persons lightly dipped, not grained, in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness.--Sir T. Browne.

Refined policy has ever been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.--Burke.

Money dishonestly acquired is never worth its cost, while a good conscience never costs as much as it is worth.--J. Petit Senn.

The honest man is a rare variety of the human species.--Chamfort.

~Honor.~--Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Hope.~--Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.--Bulwer-Lytton.

"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year; "they are a sweet-smelling flower--a species of roses."--Hawthorne.

Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.--Bacon.

The mighty hopes that make us men.--Tennyson.