Edward Gibbon

I was never less alone than when by myself.

On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first …

The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers...has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.

Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.

It was here [at the age of seventeen] that I suspended my religious inquiries.

Decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.

The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor ...

Benevolence is the foundation of Justice, since we are forbidden to injure those we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of Heaven and futurity, but in his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Hussyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.

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 …

Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of …

All gates are shut against the unfortunate.

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

Constantine was satisfied that secret impunity would be less pernicious than public scandal, and the Nicene council was edified by his public declaration, that, if he surprised a bishop in the act of adultery, he should cast his Imperial …

The example and reputation of Constantine seemed to countenance the delay of baptism. Future tyrants were encouraged to believe that the innocent blood which they might shed in a long reign would instantly be washed away in the waters of …

[C]aution and vigilance are the most important lessons of the art of war.

In every age the Persians have been addicted to intemperance, and the wines of Shiraz have triumphed over the law of Mahomet.

The traveller who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome may conceive some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have inspired when they reared their heads in the splendour of unsullied beauty.