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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“[Among the books he chooses, a statesman] ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse.”

Book Philosophy Government Science Interesting Fiction History Written Subjects Ought Accounts Prose Verses Good Book Statesmen Science And Philosophy Interesting Book

Book:Bully!

Source: Bully!

“History is an agreed-upon fiction.”

Fiction History

Book:A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses

“The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.”

Ifs Fiction History Crowds Obliged

Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights of Ashby never burnish the page of Scott with richer lights of lance and armor than the Carthaginians, winding down the Alps, cast upon Livy.”

Light Romance Moving Fiction Moral History Drama Pages Surprise Casts Stranger Accidents Features Epic Majesty Knights Armor Alps Hector Robinson Crusoe Winding Down

Book:Pleasures of Literature

Source: Pleasures of Literature

“The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction.”

Source: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V2: the History Focus

“History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.”

Facts Hands Fiction History Fables Recitals

Book:Voltaire's Alphabet of wit

Source: Voltaire's Alphabet of wit

“Do what you will this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.”

World Made Fiction History This World Contradiction Contradictory

Author:William Blake

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.”

Life Writing Stills Fiction History Four Corners Attachment Spiders

Author:Virginia Woolf

“Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.”

Should Children Young Political Fiction History Study Subjects Hero Fit Criminals Acquire Young Children Political History

Author:W. H. Auden

“The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.”

Real Character Seems Form Fiction History Novel Real Character

Book:A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

Source: A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

“Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.”

World Way Facts Stories Form Science Literature Fiction Knowledge Practice History Knowing Fashion Objects Accounts Function Historical Narrative Appropriate Biology Organisms Discourse

Author:Donna J. Haraway