People in history were real people

It's easy to look at the acts of historical figures and to kind of see them as the sum of their acts, like a simulacra of a person who just does historical shit.

But they were people. Not quite like you and me, because the past was different from now, and they thought differently and had different motivations and did different things. But they were PEOPLE. Occasionally I come across a line from a letter that really brings it home to me that these were people, they acted from belief in things and from human emotions, and that's why stuff happened. I just found a line Calvin wrote in a letter to a friend after his wife died
"I have been bereaved of the best friend of my life" - and you realise he was a bloke who loved his wife and missed her when she died.

Mozart is another one, you can't read his letters without seeing his personality shine through. To his father:

I have resolved to stay in the house to-day, although Sunday, as it is snowing heavily. To-morrow I must go out, for our "house-nymph," Madlle. Pierron, my highly esteemed pupil, who hasusually a French concert every Monday, intends to scramble through my hochgrafliche Litzau concerto. I also mean, for my sins, to let them give me something to hack away at, and show that I can do something too prima fista; for I am a regular greenhorn, and all I can do is to strum a little on the piano! I must now conclude, being more disposed to-day to write music than letters.

And another, to his cousin:

You perhaps think or believe that I must be dead? Not at all! I beg you will not think so, for how could I write so beautifully if I were dead? Could such a thing be possible? I do not attempt to make any excuses for my long silence, for you would not believe me if I did. But truth is truth; I have had so much to do that though I have had time to think of my cousin, I have had no time to write to her, so I was obliged to let it alone. But at last I have the honor to inquire how you are, and how you fare? If we soon shall have a talk? If you write with a lump of chalk? If I am sometimes in your mind? If to hang yourself you're inclined? If you're angry with me, poor fool? If your wrath begins to cool?--Oh! you are laughing! VICTORIA! I knew you could not long resist me, and in your favor would enlist me. Yes! yes!I know well how this is, though I'm in ten days off to Paris. Ifyou write to me from pity, do so soon from Augsburg city, so that I may get your letter, which to me would be far better.

Anyway, just something that occured to me, because I came across that line from Calvin. It's obvious really, but it's also easy to forget.