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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

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
Fortune
Neither
Buries
Works
Proudest
Cities
Vicissitudes
Common
Spares
Men
Empires
Grave
Graves

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[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
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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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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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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.
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[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.
Edward Gibbon
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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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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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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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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 authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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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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Style is the image of character.
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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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Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.
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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
Edward Gibbon
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The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.
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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 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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