"When, two days previously, the news of the approaching end had been made public, astonished grief had swept over the …"

"To us, with our broader outlook, our more complicated interests, our more elusive moods, their small bright world is …"

"If this is dying, then I don't think much of it."

"The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisi…"

"The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England. … With us, the most delicate and humane of all th…"

"It is not [the biographer's] business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case, as h…"

"Madame, I am the civilization they are fighting for."

"In a recently published volume—the most trenchant and brilliant series of biographical and historical studies which I…"

"I would not have his books in my house."

"... Voltaire ... The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly indeed at the hands of posterity.…"