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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

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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Firsts
Conceived
First
Ruins
Work
Nearly
Years
Twenty
Life
Twenties
Authorship
Among
Exercised
Idea
Capitol
Ideas
Amused

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Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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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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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.
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In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
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Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
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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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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
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A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
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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.
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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
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The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured form the adjacent cities a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch.
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The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
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When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.
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