“For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?”
As quoted by Edward Gibbon (1781), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. III, chapter 34
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Attila 22
King of the Hunnic Empire 406–453Related quotes
“Long before the empire had reached its greatest extent, the Romans were bored by it.”
The Roman Triumph, p. 121
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in The Times (28 November 1878), p. 10. The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had proclaimed his policy as "Imperium et Libertas".
1870s

“What Atlantic City needs is a bulldozer six blocks wide.”
https://www.philly.com The Enquirer June 5 2015
Source: Quotaes, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584(1980), p. 35

“And now it was your purpose to weep Vesuvius' flames in pious melody and spend your tears on the losses of your native place, what time the Father took the mountain from earth and lifted it to the stars only to plunge it down upon the hapless cities far and wide.”
Jamque et flere pio Vesuvina incendia cantu
mens erat et gemitum patriis impendere damnis,
cum pater exemptum terris ad sidera montem
sustulit et late miseras deiecit in urbes.
iii, line 205
Silvae, Book V

Cheers.
Speech in Rawtenstall (8 July 1886), quoted in The Times (9 July 1886), p. 6
1880s

Quoted in "The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad" - Page 351 - by Harrison E. Salisbury - History - 2003