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

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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 the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
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But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
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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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Religion is a mere question of geography.
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The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
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The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.
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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.
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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
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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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The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. ... Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.
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The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.
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The author himself is the best judge of his own performance none has so deeply meditated on the subject none is so sincerely interested in the event.
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But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .
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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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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
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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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