Quote

To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.

Edward Gibbon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Clergy
Virtues
Vices
Dangerous
Virtue
Eye
Less
Philosophic

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

Image
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon
Image
But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon
Image
It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
Edward Gibbon
Image
According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon
Image
War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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
Image
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved the peace by a constant preparation for war.
Edward Gibbon
Image
It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.
Edward Gibbon
Image
A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
Edward Gibbon
Image
In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.
Edward Gibbon
Image
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon