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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.

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
Human
Humans
Amiable
Weaknesses
Weakness
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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If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.
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A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
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Active valour may often be the present of nature but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
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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 two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. ... Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.
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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] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
Edward Gibbon
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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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In old age the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts, who sing hallelujahs above the clouds and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
Edward Gibbon
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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
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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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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
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But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .
Edward Gibbon
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
Edward Gibbon
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The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
Edward Gibbon
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Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.
Edward Gibbon