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Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

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
Thinking
Originals
Original
Habit
Unformed
Learning
Unskilled
Write
Resolved
Art
Composition
Book
Habits
Writing
Arts

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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.
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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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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
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It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome could support the institution of six vestals but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity.
Edward Gibbon
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Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.
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As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him brave as a lion yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood.
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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
Edward Gibbon
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The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.
Edward Gibbon
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The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.
Edward Gibbon
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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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In old age the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts, who sing hallelujahs above the clouds and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
Edward Gibbon
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
Edward Gibbon
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Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
Edward Gibbon
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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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The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.
Edward Gibbon
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
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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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