Edward Gibbon
Arguably the most important historian since the time of the ancient Roman Tacitus.
It was here [at the age of seventeen] that I suspended my religious inquiries.
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers...has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.
I was never less alone than when by myself.
Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
Decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.
Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?
From my childhood, I had been fond of religious disputation.
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Antoninus diffused order and tranquility over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials.
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: The first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity.
It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.