Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or historian:
“In general I do not draw well with literary men—not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)