Trevelyan Quotes

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance ( ... ); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England], she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room. ~ Virginia Woolf

If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going. ~ Virginia Woolf

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today ... The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow"
"Autobiography of an Historian", An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949). ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Village cricket spread fast through the land. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

A little man often cast a long shadow. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Such was the texture of her marble.
[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.] ~ Patrick White

Absolute certainty is the greatest of all illusions. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

And how fascinating history is - the long, variegated pageant of man's still continuing evolution of this strange planet, so much the most interesting of all the myriads of spinners through space. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences. ~ G.K. Chesterton

We are the children of the earth and removed from her our spirit withers. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

I never knew a man go for an honest day's walk for whatever distance, great or small, and not have his reward in the repossession of his soul. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

One half who graduate from college never read another book. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

I know how strong you are, but even the strongest sword needs a steady hand in battle. I swore to stand by your side, through all life's challenges, and I meant it. I don't care what me father, or anyone else, thinks. I will always be there for you when you need me. I love you, Trevelyan. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The ruling classes today nourish the conviction that national hatreds and rivalries are inevitable. ~ Charles Trevelyan

The chorus-ending from Aristophanes, raised every night from every ditch that drains into the Mediterranean, hoarse and primeval as the raven's croak, is one of the grandest tunes to walk by. Or on a night in May, one can walk through the too rare Italian forests for an hour on end and never be out of hearing of the nightingale's song. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me! ~ G. M. Trevelyan

We are literally children of the earth, and removed from her our spirits wither or run to various forms of insanity. Unless we can refresh ourselves at least by intermittent contact with nature, we grow awry. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

I have the greatest sympathy with the growth of the socialist party. I think they understand the evils that surround us and hammer them into people's minds better than we Liberals. ~ Charles Trevelyan

There is no orthodoxy in walking. It is a land of many paths and no-paths, where every one goes his own and is right. ~ G. M. Trevelyan