Painting/history

Famous quotes containing the words painting and/or history:

“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)