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

“We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.”

“Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. ”

“The uncommon abilities and fortune of Severus have induced an elegant historian to compare him with the first and greatest of the Cæsars. The parallel is, at least, imperfect. Where shall we find, in the character of Severus, the commanding superiority of the soul, the generous clemency, and the various genius, which could reconcile and unite the love of pleasure, the thirst of knowledge, and the fire of ambition? ⁴⁴⁴⁴ Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan to exalt the character of Cæsar, yet the idea he gives of that hero, in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same time making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the noblest panegyric.”

“After a war of about 40 years, undertaken by the most stupid [Claudius], maintained by the most dissolute [Nero], and terminated by the most timid [Domitian] of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island [of Britain] submitted to the Roman yoke.”

“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.”

“The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;Widening disparity between very rich and very poor; Increased demand to live off the state.”