All Quotes

"These personal statements of Tacitus' aims and beliefs seem to be, if not wholly consistent, at least candid; but even the most superficial reading of his history will bring them into question. The claim to write "sine ira et studio" has been condemned by certain critics as sheer hypocrisy, and while most scholars have thought it honest in intention, few have considered the attempt successful. The aim of moral instruction, "ne virtutes sileantur", has been dismissed as political partisanship; his wish to trace events to their causes has been thought casual or pretentious. His views on philosophy and religion have been variously called agnostic, sceptical, stoic, fatalist, superstitious, and (as a last resort) "deeply original"."

"The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest."

"Music is the universal language of mankind — poetry their universal pastime and delight."

"Stars of the summer night! Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps!"

"Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps."

"She floats upon the river of his thoughts."

"Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear,— Forever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly,— "Forever — never! Never — forever!""

"I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where."

"And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend."

"In the valley of the Pegnitz, where, across broad meadow-lands, Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremburg, the ancient, stands.Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng."

"Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed, — for the artist never dies."

"Where'er a noble deed is wrought, Where'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise."

"St. Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!"

"The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night."

"The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death."

"A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

"Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupation, That is known as the Children's Hour."

"I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet."

"Build on, and make thy castles high and fair, Rising and reaching upward to the skies; Listen to voices in the upper air, Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries."

"He speaketh not; and yet there lies A conversation in his eyes."

"In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face — the face of one long dead — Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light."

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending; Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse."

"There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid."

"O Bells of San Blas in vain Ye call back the Past again; The Past is deaf to your prayer! Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere."

"He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce."

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."

"Books are sepulchres of thought."

"This is the place. Stand still, my steed,— Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been."

"The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark."

"The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken."

"He has singed the beard of the king of Spain."

"Look, then, into thine heart, and write!"

"Gibbon had no followers, founded no school, and his chief bequest to posterity was in fact his style, one of the most distinctive in the English language, whose influence is now and again detectable in the prose of English historians down to the present day."

"The great joy I have had is a long dose of Gibbon, quite incomparable, especially on the Eastern empire. I know no other panorama quite like that. Finlay, I daresay, goes deeper, but he hasn't quite the same magic."

"No matter what his weaknesses may be, his “writings will instruct the last generation of mankind.” This remark, which Gibbon made about Tacitus, can, with equal justice, be applied to Gibbon himself."

"We met,—'twas in a crowd."

"Gayly the troubadour Touched his guitar."

"I picked up Whitaker's criticism on Gibbon. Pointless spite, with here and there a just remark. It would be strange if in so large a work as Gibbon's there were nothing open to just remark. How utterly all the attacks on his History are forgotten! this of Whitaker; Randolph's; Chelsum's; Davies's; that stupid beast Joseph Milner's; even Watson's. And still the book, with all its great faults of substance and style, retains, and will retain, its place in our literature; and this though it is offensive to the religious feeling of the country, and really most unfair where religion is concerned."

"Is it perhaps Gibbon with his Fall of Rome that so darkens the air of eight hundred years with a squalid dust-storm of demolition as to obscure our sight of the unquenched lights of the mind of man? Ruskin joins day to human day again."

"Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"

"It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the infidel Gibbon."

"Towards the end of the century, in the years 1776–88, a historian, the greatest of the century, as many believe, produced one of the most impressive books ever written on the ancient world – Edward Gibbon (1737–94), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six quarto volumes. The range of his reading in Latin and Greek widened and deepened during his years in Lausanne; he also admired Porson and defended him against attacks. Porson in turn wrote a splendid review of Gibbon's work. For Bentley Gibbon found the most appropriate epithet, "tremendous". It is clear, too, from his great work that his qualifications for writing it included an acquaintance with the history of scholarship."

"Porson...thought the Decline and Fall beyond all comparison the greatest literary production of the eighteenth century, and was in the habit of repeating long passages from it. Yet I have heard him say that “there could not be a better exercise for a schoolboy than to turn a page of it into English.”"

"He said the facts that made up the volume of narrative were unparalleled in atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was to be traced, either in ancient or modern history, in the correct periods of Tacitus or the luminous page of Gibbon."

"I have ten thousand apologies to make, for not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives me to find, that by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe."

"Edward Gibbon...is the one irreplaceable English historian. What other 18th-century historian is still read, not only for his style, nor as a contemporary witness of events, but as an interpreter of past ages? Gibbon now seems much less dated than his great successors, Macaulay, Carlyle, Froude; nor can anyone, today, discuss the problem – the permanent problem – of the decline of the Roman Empire except in implicit dialogue with him."

"Gibbon was an exact and exacting scholar (hence his disdain for the French philosophes who subordinated scholarship to their philosophy). He read the latest articles, subscribed to the learned journals, cited and criticised his sources. His errors are remarkably few. Of course much has been written on the subject since his time. But his scholarship and his judgement can seldom be faulted."

"Gibbon's historical philosophy was...animated by...what we now call "civic humanism": that is, the conviction that the progress of society depends on a certain moral force: the "spirit" which, to Montesquieu, must animate the "laws" if history is not to be, as it often is, merely anarchical, "the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind". It was because he believed intensely in civic virtue that he deplored the attitude of the early Christians. When Roman civilisation was in danger, these men contracted out. They refused to serve the state and preferred to sit on pillars in the desert or waste their energies in sterile theological disputes. On the other hand, when the church, or churchmen, showed such a spirit, he would commend them. "Active virtue" was to be respected wherever it was expressed."

"Gibbon was not interested in religious doctrine, though he amused himself with its speculative refinements. But religion and Churches, he would admit, are a social and psychological necessity, and the particular forms which they take are important, for they can influence the progress or decline of civilization. Therefore the historical question he asked was, did the ideas of Christianity and the organization of the Church, as adapted to the Roman Empire, generate or stifle public spirit, freedom, and the advancement of knowledge and a plural society. His answer was that they stifled it. If Christianity had first been established in independent city-states like those of Greece, perhaps it would have assumed a different and more useful form – as it eventually did in the communes of Italy and, more successfully, in the Protestant cities of Switzerland. But the very fact of its establishment by imperial power, as an ideological support to that power, made it subservient to a centralized, monopolist system whose organization and absolutism, in its own formative period, it imitated and sustained."

"The penetration, solidity, and taste, that made you the first of historians, dear Sir, prevent my being surprised at your being the best writer of controversial pamphlets too. I have read you with more precipitation than such a work deserved, but I could not disobey you and detain it. Yet even in that hurry I could discern, besides a thousand beauties and strokes of wit, the inimitable eighty-third page, and the conscious dignity that you maintain throughout over your monkish antagonists. When you are so superior in argument, it would look like insensibility to the power of your reasoning, to select transient passages for commendation; and yet I must mention one that pleased me particularly, from the delicacy of the severity, and from its novelty too; it is, ‘Bold is not the word.’ This is the feathered arrow of Cupid, that is more formidable than the club of Hercules."