“In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, chapter XV; p. 479 in volume 1 of the Penguin edition.)

“The Persians expressed their desire of being introduced to the presence of the Roman emperor. They were at length conducted to a soldier, who was seated on the grass. A piece of stale bacon and a few hard pease composed his supper. A coarse woollen garment of purple was the only circumstance that announced his dignity. The conference was conducted with the same disregard of courtly elegance. Carus, taking off a cap which he wore to conceal his baldness, assured the ambassadors that, unless their master acknowledged the superiority of Rome, he would speedily render Persia as naked of trees as his own head was destitute of hair.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, chapter XiI; p. 348 in volume 1 of the Penguin edition.)

“14. According to Dr. Keating (History of Ireland, p. 13, 14.), the giant Partholanus, who was the son of Seara, the son of Esra, the son of Sru, the son of Framant, the son of Fathaclan, the son of Magog, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah, landed on the coast of Munster, the 14th day of May, in the year of the world one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight. Though he succeeded in his great enterprise, the loose behaviour of his wife rendered his domestic life wry unhappy, and provoked him to such a degree, that he killed – her favorite greyhound. This, as the learned historian very properly observes, was the first instance of female falsehood and infidelity ever known in Ireland.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, chapter IX; p. 233 in volume 1 of the Penguin edition.)

“We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the verge of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refine policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the profound observation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the exercise of arms.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, chapter X; p. 282 in volume 1 of the Penguin edition.)

“Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phœnicians, and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labour in their own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of the more recent history of Spanish America.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, chapter VI; p. 180 in volume 1 of the Penguin edition.)