The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

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.

I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor.

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.

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.

The Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.