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

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
Less
Philosophic
Clergy
Virtues
Vices
Dangerous
Virtue
Eye

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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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While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius.
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Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion.
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .
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There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
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The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
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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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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.
Edward Gibbon
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A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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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 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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