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Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.

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
Every
Ordinary
Deviate
Events
Deity
Courses
Deities
Course
Immediate
Religion
Accident
Action
Event
Nature
Accidents
Rashly
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Appearance
Ascribed

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A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.
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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.
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The author himself is the best judge of his own performance none has so deeply meditated on the subject none is so sincerely interested in the event.
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On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.
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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 criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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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] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
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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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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
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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] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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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.
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But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.
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The history of empires is the record of human misery the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
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[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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