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The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province [Britain] was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean.

Edward Gibbon

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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Ocean
Cloud
Province
Among
Fabulous
Shores
Arms
Islands
Atlantic
Dark
Shore
Caesar
Lost
Britain
Provinces
Clouds
Discoveries
Finally
Roman
Dispelled
Discovery
Settled
Cleared

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If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.
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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
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If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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In old age the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts, who sing hallelujahs above the clouds and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
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Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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Style is the image of character.
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray he flattered only to ruin and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.
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A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
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It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.
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Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
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[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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A state of skepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.
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The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
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