“For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian──ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.”

“I say, there is no darknessbut ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled thanthe Egyptians in their fog.”

“The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.”

“It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.”

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

“The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the two, who have departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have some smattering of this vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. These trouble the world and are bad judges of everything. The people and the wise constitute the world; these despise it, and are despised. They judge badly of everything, and the world judges rightly of them.”