And glory long has made the sages smile;
It is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind -
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind. [ Byron ]

Reason is an historian, but the passions are actors. [ Rivarol ]

I was once a poet and a historian, and now I am nothing. [ Boudier, for his epitaph ]

Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul. [ Carlyle ]

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as tbey ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were. [ Cervantes ]

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me? [ Thackeray ]

The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries; and, though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, philosopher, and historian, - the humble listener, - there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come. [ James A. Garfield ]