It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes".

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain, unless one can. do big things.

Perhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something else.

[History is] the very servant of the servants of God, the drudge of all the drudges.

In the last resort, sheer insight is the greatest asset of all.

The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain unless one can ... do big things.

I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything.

I learned a great many things in the Marines that helped me as a football coach. The Marines train men hard and to do things the right way, just as a football team must train.

That face. That body. And you know he’s packing. Look at the angle on that dangle.

I had this habit of an academic of answering the question. I should have fobbed it off.

Your presence is a miracle.

Some of those more out-there jokes were written in the wee hours of the morning. Somehow, they remained funny the next day.

I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming 'War Horse' on Dartmoor.

If money go before, all ways do lie open.