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 rigo…

- William H. Prescott

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

- William H. Prescott

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

- William H. Prescott

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

- William H. Prescott

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 …

- William H. Prescott

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 g…

- William H. Prescott

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 dra…

- William H. Prescott

The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the mater…

- William H. Prescott