Jacob Burckhardt

"In the life of the mind they [the Greeks] reached frontiers which the rest of mankind cannot permit themselves to fall short of, at least in their attempts to acknowledge and to profit, even where the…"

"Their knowledge and their faculty of observation were extraordinary. By their study of the world the Greeks illuminate not only their own nature but that of all other ancient peoples; without them, an…"

"All subsequent objective perception of the world is only elaboration on the framework the Greeks began. We see with the eyes of the Greeks and use their phrases when we speak."

"In reality, then, it was the Swiss historian, Jakob Burckhardt, who in 1860 established the concept that has been current in our time—the idea of a Renaissance as a general movement, particularly asso…"

"Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges - for a comparable approach to the fall of the ancient polity more generally"

"Burckhardt's Cultur der Renaissance in Italien is the most penetrating and subtle treatise on the history of civilisation that exists in literature; but its merit lies in the originality with which th…"