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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.

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
Age
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History
Content
Means
Seek
Humbler
Experience
However
Desirous
Mean
Industry
Banished
Present
Commerce
Philosophy
Riches
Study
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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
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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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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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Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers the second, more personal and important, from himself.
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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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There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
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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.
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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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[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
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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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Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.
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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
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Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
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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 fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius.
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