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It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.

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
Mind
Regret
Minds
Conversing
Habit
Principally
Loss
Exercised
History
Formed
Business
Seldom
Power
Occupation
Long
Habits

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The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition and may therefore deserve to be considered, as a singular event in the history of the human mind.
Edward Gibbon
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Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon
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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
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The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.
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[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
Edward Gibbon
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In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Edward Gibbon
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
Edward Gibbon
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Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
Edward Gibbon
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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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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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Style is the image of character.
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To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.
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