On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.

France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.