Quote

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

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

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

Image
The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
Edward Gibbon
Image
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
Edward Gibbon
Image
Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
Edward Gibbon
Image
The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.
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
But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon
Image
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Edward Gibbon
Image
If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.
Edward Gibbon
Image
History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
Edward Gibbon
Image
In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .
Edward Gibbon
Image
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.
Edward Gibbon
Image
In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.
Edward Gibbon
Image
It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
Edward Gibbon
Image
The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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
Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
Image
[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.
Edward Gibbon