G. M. Trevelyan
G. M. Trevelyan
George Macaulay Trevelyan, OM CBE FRS FBA, was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth16 February 1876
people ordinary way
Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people.
intellect evidence historian
The best historian is he who combines knowledge of the evidence with the largest intellect, the warmest human sympathy and the highest imaginative powers.
men space history
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.
song italian night
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.
children earth spirit
We are the children of the earth and removed from her our spirit withers.
land path orthodoxy
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.
book writing sweat
What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow.
inspirational funny graduation
One half who graduate from college never read another book.
history people priests
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.
real past history
Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.
men long shadow
A little man often cast a long shadow.
education reading teaching
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
truth lying passion
The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that Once, on this earth, 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 are gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow.
past history historical
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.