Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letters to His Son — How History Should Be Read (1748)
“ When a historian pretends to give you the causes and motives of events, compare those causes and motives with the characters and interests of the parties concerned, and judge for yourself whether they correspond or not. ”
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letters to His Son — How History Should Be Read (1748)
“ Consider whether you cannot assign others more probably; and in that examination do not despise some very mean and trifling causes of the actions of great men; for so various and inconsistent is human nature, so strong and so changeable are our passions, so fluctuating are our wills, and so much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular consequential character. The best have something bad, and something little ”
