Edward Gibbon Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Edward Gibbon on Wise Famous Quotes.
And it was the part of a wise man to forget inevitable calamities of human life in the enjoyment of the fleeting hour.
Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for "The
A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.
A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.
Does there exist a single instance of a saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?
It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.
The Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.
Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
And it was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy.
The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
In reality, Rome had grown too big for lots of people to handle its vast affairs any longer by committee.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
[Personal] industry must be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal interest.
[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.
But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
Fear has been the original parent of superstition, every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of invisible enemies
[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
The vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.
The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.
The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy
Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.