William H. Prescott Quotes

• Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!

  William H. Prescott

  Memorial Day, Military, War

  28 Copy quote

• Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good.

  William H. Prescott

  Self, Enlightened, Interest

  12 Copy quote

• No man is quite so much a hero in the dark as in broad daylight, in solitude as in society, in the gloom of the churchyard as in the blaze of the drawing-room. The season and the place may be such as to oppress the stoutest heart with a mysterious awe, which, if not fear, is near akin to it.

  William H. Prescott

  Hero, Heart, Dark

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.588

  15 Copy quote

• The history of literature is the history of the human mind.

  William H. Prescott

  Mind, Literature, Humans

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

  11 Copy quote

• Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.

  William H. Prescott

  Men, Agency, Law

  William H. Prescott (2005). “The Conquests of Mexico And Peru”, p.819, Cosimo, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

• The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.

  William H. Prescott

  Intellectual, Mind, Literature

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

  10 Copy quote

• The triumphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be forgotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler.

  William H. Prescott

  Song, Warrior, Age

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.239

  9 Copy quote

• Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.

  William H. Prescott

  Eye, Hands, Civilization

  William H. PRESCOTT (1873). “History of the Conquest of México”, p.173

  7 Copy quote

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