William H. Prescott quotes
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“Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good.”
-- William H. Prescott -
“Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.”
-- William H. PrescottSource : William H. PRESCOTT (1873). “History of the Conquest of México”, p.173
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“The history of literature is the history of the human mind.”
-- William H. PrescottSource : WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245
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“Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.”
-- William H. PrescottSource : William H. Prescott (2005). “The Conquests of Mexico And Peru”, p.819, Cosimo, Inc.
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“The triumphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be forgotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler.”
-- William H. PrescottSource : WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.239
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“The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.”
-- William H. Prescott -
“No man is quite so much a hero in the dark as in broad daylight, in solitude as in society, in the gloom of the churchyard as in the blaze of the drawing-room. The season and the place may be such as to oppress the stoutest heart with a mysterious awe, which, if not fear, is near akin to it.”
-- William H. PrescottSource : WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.588
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“I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.”
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“The condition of an enlightened mind is a surrendered heart.”
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“The social and industrial structure of America is founded upon an enlightened citizenship.”
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“The ignorant ever shun and dread the gifted and enlightened.”
Source : Francis Alexander Durivage (1856). “The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage: And Other Tales”, p.52
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“I'm curious about everything--even things that don't interest me.”
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“Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.”
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