A Quote by Henry Adams

History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

Henry Adams

Quote Topics

Aristocratic Because Educated Historian History Literary Most Rich Well

Quote Author

Henry Adams
American - Historian
February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918

I may remind you that history is not a branch of literature. The facts of history, like the facts of geology or astronomy, can supply material for literary art; for manifest reasons they lend themselves to artistic representation far more readily than those of the natural sciences; but to clothe the story of human society in a literary dress is no more the part of a historian as a historian, than it is the part of an astronomer as an astronomer to present in an artistic shape the story of the stars.

J. B. Bury

I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.

H. G. Wells

Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.

Frank Moore Cross

On a spectrum of literary productions, memoir is just another form. If the person doing the reviewing or critiquing was ill-educated about literary forms, they could write something dunderheaded about the author or their life (I've seen these and barfed at them), but anyone who is well-practiced and educated in literature - why would they leave that at the door when entering memoir?

Lidia Yuknavitch

We no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries, and poor and badly-educated ones.

Andreas Schleicher

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Henry David Thoreau

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

Jonathan Coe

I was not interested in luxuries because I had an elegant life as a child. My family, very aristocratic, one of the richest in Colombia, educated me like a princess, in the English style.

Virginia Vallejo

A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don't have an advantage or this and that. I've said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.

Donald Trump

The Boston Globe's award-winning journalism as well as its rich history and tradition of excellence have established it as one of the most well-respected media companies in the country.

John W. Henry

Without history we are infants. Ask what binds the British Isles more closely to America than to Europe and only history gives a reply. Of all intellectual pursuits, history is the most supremely useful. That is why people crave it and need ever more of it.

Simon Jenkins

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

Agatha Christie

The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.

Matthew Pearl

I am a critic who is pulled toward history. But Bob Dylan himself is a great historian. He is an historian who acts out history. So it always has a personal stamp. It always has a particular timbre. It always has a particular howl, or a moan, in that voice.

Greil Marcus

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.