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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
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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
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Gibbon
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Deeply
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Judge
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Sincerely
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
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
Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .
Edward Gibbon
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
Edward Gibbon
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Edward Gibbon
The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
Edward Gibbon
A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
Edward Gibbon
The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.
Edward Gibbon
Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
Edward Gibbon
The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.
Edward Gibbon
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon
[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.
Edward Gibbon
History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
Edward Gibbon
[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
Edward Gibbon
I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
Edward Gibbon
Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.
Edward Gibbon
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
