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To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.

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
Spent
Oxford
Son
Renounce
Months
Fourteen
College
Proved
Willing
Idle
Mother
Acknowledge
Disclaim
Whole
Obligation
Unprofitable
Life
University
Cheerfully

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The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.
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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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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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A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
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Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
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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.
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The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.
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Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
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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 union of the Roman empire was dissolved its genius was humbled in the dust and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.
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The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.
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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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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
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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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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
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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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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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In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
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