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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.

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
Security
Freedom
Ends
Wanted
Courage

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Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers the second, more personal and important, from himself.
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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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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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A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.
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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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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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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
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But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.
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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.
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A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
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Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
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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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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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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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If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.
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