Quote

Active valour may often be the present of nature but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.

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
Fruit
Discipline
Habit
Present
History
Valour
Often
Diligence
Nature
Patient
May
Active

More quotes by 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
The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
Edward Gibbon
Image
History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Edward Gibbon
Image
A state of skepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.
Edward Gibbon
Image
[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
Edward Gibbon
Image
To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
Edward Gibbon
Image
[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
Edward Gibbon
Image
But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.
Edward Gibbon
Image
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
Edward Gibbon
Image
This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.
Edward Gibbon
Image
bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
Edward Gibbon
Image
I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
Edward Gibbon
Image
To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
Edward Gibbon
Image
Freedom is the first wish of our heart freedom is the first blessing of nature and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon