Quote

On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.

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
Ground
Lustre
Touch
Extinguished
Pride
Displayed
Moment
Slightest
History
Fabric
Moments
Sudden
Expiring
Power
Senate
Unsupported
Ever
Fell
Blazed

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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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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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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.
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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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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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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
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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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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.
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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
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Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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The history of empires is the record of human misery the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
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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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It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected that victory is the fruit of moral as well as military virtue and that the prince, and even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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