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

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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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Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
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[The] penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety.
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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
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
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The union of the Roman empire was dissolved its genius was humbled in the dust and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.
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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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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
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To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.
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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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A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.
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The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.
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A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
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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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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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