Edward Gibbon

It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

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

The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.

In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings 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.

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.

We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.

Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.