“All the rest of [Shakespeare's] vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures — an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.”

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin what what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”

“Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.-from the Prefatory”