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Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray he flattered only to ruin and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.

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
Reason
Conscience
Justified
Flattered
Might
However
Occasionally
Inconvenient
Always
State
Ruin
Privileges
Interest
Betray
Treaties
History
Ruins
Bind
Art
Arts
Oath
Obsequious
Cannot
Obligation
Released
Oaths
States
Privilege
Promised
Ample

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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
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Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.
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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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The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
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The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.
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[The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny . . .
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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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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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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.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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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.
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I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.
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The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.
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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.
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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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Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.
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