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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.

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
Violation
Perpetual
Humanity
Justice
War
Form
Fairest
Implies

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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
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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.
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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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.
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This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.
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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
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[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
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A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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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.
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It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected that victory is the fruit of moral as well as military virtue and that the prince, and even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.
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The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
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