Related:

• The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
  -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) -- Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Chap. iii...
• In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security.
  When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free....
• Inadmissible: Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with
  and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone....
• It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
  For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time....
• I was never less alone than when by myself. -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) -- Memoirs, Vol.
  i, p. 117...
• Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
  -- Edward Gibbon (1734-1794)...
• The more often you stop, the more difficult it is to continue. -- Edward Abbey
• All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get.