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

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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.
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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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So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
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The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
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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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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
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[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
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The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
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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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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
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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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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.
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We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
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