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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Edward Gibbon

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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Sympathy
Misery
Relation
Cold
Suffering
Distant

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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
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The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.
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In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
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[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
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History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
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Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers the second, more personal and important, from himself.
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In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
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A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.
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The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.
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The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.
Edward Gibbon
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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
Edward Gibbon
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There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
Edward Gibbon
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
Edward Gibbon
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The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.
Edward Gibbon
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The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
Edward Gibbon
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In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .
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