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 pour tous les temps; et celles qu'on emprunte à des ennemis ne sont pas les moins précieuses.—, Napoléon, v. p. ii. Old facts may always be fresh, and may give out a fresh meaning for each generation,—, Lectures, 62. The object is to lead the student to attend to them; to make him take interest in history not as a mere narrative, but as a chain of causes and effects still unwinding itself before our eyes, and full of momentous consequences to himself and his descendants—an unremitting conflict between good and evil powers, of which every act done by any one of us, insignificant as we are, forms one of the incidents; a conflict in which even the smallest of us cannot escape from taking part, in which whoever does not help the right side is helping the wrong.—, Inaugural Address, 59.

I hold that the degree in which Poets dwell in sympathy with the Past, marks exactly the degree of their poetical faculty.— in, Memoirs, June, 1842. In all political, all social, all human questions whatever, history is the main resource of the inquirer.—, Meaning of History, 15. There are no truths which more readily gain the assent of mankind, or are more firmly retained by them, than those of an historical nature, depending upon the testimony of others.—, Letters to French Philosophers, 9. Improvement consists in bringing our opinions into nearer agreement with facts; and we shall not be likely to do this while we look at facts only through glasses coloured by those very opinions.—, Inaugural Address, 25.