“Your little pool feels every wind and reflects the stars; your little plot of ground becomes a miniature world, reproducing the greater one without.”

A vivid image for how deep study of one period opens onto the whole · Inaugural lecture, A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History, 1904

• Perception
• Wonder

“The wisest historians I have known recognized most fully how little they could know about the times they knew best.”

Praising intellectual humility as a mark of the best scholars · Inaugural lecture, A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History, 1904

• Humility
• Wisdom

“How transitory and fragile is the reputation of histories that were welcomed as perfect in their day.”

On the short life of most historical scholarship · Inaugural lecture, A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History, 1904

• Fame
• Time