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.

Recluse fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate . . .

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.

Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.

When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.