Quotes about history

48 quotes · 15 authors

Quotes

  1. For I deem it to be the chief function of history to rescue merit from oblivion, and to hold up before evil words and evil deeds the terror of the reprobation of posterity.

    Book cover: AnnalsAnnals

  2. The name [Christians] was derived from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judæa. By that event the sect, of which he was the founder, received a blow, which, for a time, checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigour, not only in Judæa, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which every thing infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world.

    Book cover: AnnalsAnnals

  3. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  4. 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 prodigies fictitious or exaggerated.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  5. If we consult the succeeding writers ... their knowledge will appear gradually to increase as their means of information must have diminished, a circumstance which frequently occurs in historical disquisition.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  6. Since the foundation of Rome no general had more nobly deserved a triumph than Aurelian.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  7. 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.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  8. It was probably some ingenious fancy, of comparing the thirty tyrants of Rome with the thirty tyrants of Athens, that induced the writers of the Augustan History to select that celebrated number, which has been gradually received into a popular appellation. But in every light the parallel is idle and defective. What resemblance can we discover between a council of thirty persons, the united oppressors of a single city, and an uncertain list of independent rivals, who rose and fell in irregular succession through the extent of a vast empire? Nor can the number of thirty be completed, unless we include in the account the women and children who were honoured with the Imperial title.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  9. Some particular instances may occur of eunuchs distinguished by their fidelity, their valour, and their abilities; but if we examine the general history of Persia, India, and China, we shall find that the power of the eunuchs has uniformly marked the decline and fall of every dynasty.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  10. This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  11. But this splendid exaggeration, which even at present it would be extremely difficult to reconcile with the real state of mankind, can be considered only as the rash sally of a devout but careless writer, the measure of whose belief was regulated by that of his wishes. But neither the belief nor the wishes of the fathers can alter the truth of history.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  12. If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire