“Historian — An unsuccessful novelist.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
Time (26 June 2006)

"Statement of Belief," Bookman, Sept 1928

“David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism.”
"Hitler's Ghost" http://www.fpp.co.uk/StMartinsPress/Hitchens0696.html, Vanity Fair (June 1996)
1990s
Introduction to Chivalry (1921) by James Branch Cabell, later published in Prometheans : Ancient and Modern (1933), p. 279
Context: Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in Figures of Earth he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred books, just as in Jurgen he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet truth about human life.

“Praise is the shipwreck of historians.”
The Study of History (1895)

“The historian is a reversed prophet.”
Der Historiker ist ein rückwärtsgekehrter Prophet.
Athenäum, I, 2, 20: Fragmente
Athenäum (1798 - 1800)

“The revolution does not need historians.”