“a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, repudiated by society and civilization... driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity—how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution... had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that 18th century?... after his voice was stilled, all Europe listened to him.”

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“All in all, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire may be ranked as the supreme book of the 18th century. It was not the most influential but as a work of literary art it was unsurpassed in its time or kind.”

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“As in science, so in philosophy he was a lover, not a professor... he was endlessly concerned with the interpretation of nature and the meaning of life. As he became older, he grew through science and poetry into a sage. He found illumination about the whole from every object, moment, and part”

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“Europe was ready for a gospel that would exalt feeling above thought. It was tired of the restraints of customs, conventions, manners, and laws. It had heard enough of reason, argument, and philosophy; all this riot of unmoored minds seemed to have left the world devoid of meaning, the soul empty of imagination and hope”

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“Faust, in Part I, is individualism incarnate; in Part II he finds 'salvation,' health of soul, through working for the general good... [Goethe] as he matured through political office perceived that human life is a co-operative process; that the individual survives by mutual aid, and that self-seeking actions, though still the basic force, must be limited by the needs of the group.”

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“Gibbon's style is as luminous as irony would allow, and it shed light wherever it turned, except where prejudice darkened his view... His scholarship was immense and detailed. His footnotes are a treasury of learning lightened with wit... Child of the Enlightenment, Gibbon longed to be a philosopher”

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“It is the obligation of the old to serve as a brake upon the energy of the young”

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“Venerable patriarch of French letters, the glory of France, defender of a hundred victims of intolerant creeds and unjust laws; Voltaire's crowning and redeeming virtue was his humanity. He stirred the conscience of Europe, he denounced war as 'the great illusion.' He could be irascible and break out in a temper; but, did his virtues outweigh his vices? Yes, and even if we do not place in the scale his intellectual with his moral qualities. Against his parsimony we must place his generosity, against his love of money his cheerful acceptance of losses and his readiness to share his gains.”

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“We know that a lifetime is but a moment in history, and that the historian's best is soon washed away as the stream of knowledge grows. But we confirmed our belief that historiography has been too departmentalized, and that some of us should try to write history whole as it was lived, in all the facets of the complex and continuing drama.”

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