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The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

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
Study
Supplies
Passion
Perpetual
Pleasure
Enjoyment
Hours
Fresh
Love
Rational
Hour
Independent
Derives
Source
Vigor

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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .
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Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
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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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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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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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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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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
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The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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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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Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
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But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition.
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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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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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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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The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
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