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So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.

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
War
Praise
Benefactors
Long
Minds
Destroyers
Mind
Continue
Users
Drug
Ambitious
Mankind
Chief
Military
Chiefs
Shall
Pursuit
Upon
Remain
Lavish

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Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
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Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
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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.
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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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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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In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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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.
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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
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[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
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The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.
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The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.
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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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