Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"The dissipation of Blandford, and the disputes of Portsmouth, consumed the hours which were not employed in the field; and amid the perpetual hurry of an inn, a barrack, or a guard-room, all literary ideas were banished from my mind."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"My personal freedom had been somewhat impaired by the House of Commons and the Board of Trade; but I was now delivered from the chain of duty and dependence, from the hopes and fears of political adventure: my sober mind was no longer intoxicated by the fumes of party, and I rejoiced in my escap...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"By many, conversation is esteemed as a theatre or a school: but, after the morning has been occupied by the labours of the library, I wish to unbend rather than to exercise my mind; and in the interval between tea and supper I am far from disdaining the innocent amusement of a game at cards."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"While I served in the militia, before and after the publication of my essay, this idea ripened in my mind; nor can I paint in more lively colours the feelings of the moment, than by transcribing some passages, under their respective dates, from a journal which I kept at that time."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he thought: his piety was offended by the excessive worship of creatures; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the testimony of our senses."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"Such hardships may steel the mind and body against the injuries of fortune; but my timid reserve was astonished by the crowd and tumult of the school; the want of strength and activity disqualified me for the sports of the play-field; nor have I forgotten how often in the year forty-six I was re...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1796

"Low in a humble Preface authors kneel; / In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1797

"Their [young persons'] minds are like a sheet of white paper, which takes any impression that it is proposed to make upon it."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1797

"I would neither corrupt my imagination with impurity, nor steel my heart by barbarous narratives and sanguinary persecutions."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1797

"Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of the soil."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)