“he passed the nights without sleep, and avoided all his usual places of recreation, and to those who wondered at the change, and inquired the reason of it, he gave the answer, that "the trophy of Miltiades would not let him sleep."”
— Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Dryden trans., rev. A. H. Clough)
“Society is founded on Hero-worship.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill.”
— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 6 (1789)
“In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.”
— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 (1776)
“The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.”
— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3 (1781)
“If meditation breeds science, wisdom comes by disillusion, even on the subject of science itself.”
— George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. I: Reason in Common Sense (1905)
“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.”
— Herodotus, The Histories, Vol. I (trans. G. C. Macaulay)
“One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind.”
— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 6 (1789)
Every quote in this collection was verified
against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it
truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
Start free to bring these voices into your daily practice.