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All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
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
Growth
Wisdom
Doe
Human
Humans
Must
Retrograde
Progression
Advance
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
Edward Gibbon
[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
Edward Gibbon
The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province [Britain] was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean.
Edward Gibbon
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
Edward Gibbon
A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice his profusion, of liberality his obstinacy, of firmness.
Edward Gibbon
Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.
Edward Gibbon
The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
Edward Gibbon
To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
Edward Gibbon
[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Edward Gibbon
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
Edward Gibbon
Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion.
Edward Gibbon
According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
Edward Gibbon
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
Edward Gibbon
In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon
The author himself is the best judge of his own performance none has so deeply meditated on the subject none is so sincerely interested in the event.
Edward Gibbon
The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.
Edward Gibbon
But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.
Edward Gibbon
