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The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.

Edward Gibbon

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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
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More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .
Edward Gibbon
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
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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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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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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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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
Edward Gibbon
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A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
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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But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.
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The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
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 fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.
Edward Gibbon
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The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
Edward Gibbon
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[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
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 . . .
Edward Gibbon
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
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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