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William H. Prescott Quotes

Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!

Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!

William H. Prescott
Memorial Day, Military, War

No man is quite so much a hero in the dark as in broad daylight, in solitude as in society, in the gloom of the churchyard as in the blaze of the drawing-room. The season and the place may be such as to oppress the stoutest heart with a mysterious awe, which, if not fear, is near akin to it.

William H. Prescott
Hero, Heart, Dark
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.588

Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good.

William H. Prescott
Self, Enlightened, Interest

The history of literature is the history of the human mind.

William H. Prescott
Mind, Literature, Humans
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.

William H. Prescott
Men, Agency, Law
William H. Prescott (2005). “The Conquests of Mexico And Peru”, p.819, Cosimo, Inc.

The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.

William H. Prescott
Intellectual, Mind, Literature
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

The triumphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be forgotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler.

William H. Prescott
Song, Warrior, Age
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.239

Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.

William H. Prescott
Eye, Hands, Civilization
William H. PRESCOTT (1873). “History of the Conquest of México”, p.173

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