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The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.

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
Found
Nature
Cheapest
Human
Navy
Humans
Soldier
Army
Courage
Quality
Common

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.
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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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Style is the image of character.
Edward Gibbon
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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
Edward Gibbon
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
Edward Gibbon
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
Edward Gibbon
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And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor.
Edward Gibbon
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In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
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[The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny . . .
Edward Gibbon
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If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.
Edward Gibbon
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The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured form the adjacent cities a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch.
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While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius.
Edward Gibbon
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[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
Edward Gibbon
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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
Edward Gibbon
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Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
Edward Gibbon