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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.

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
Physical
Greece
Ordinary
Sage
Study
Rome
Sages
Moral
Aside
Alterations
History
Occupation
Occupations
Government
Unconscious
Spectacle
Life
Awful
Pursuing
World
Turned
Appeared

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A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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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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History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
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A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice his profusion, of liberality his obstinacy, of firmness.
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If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.
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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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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.
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Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion.
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Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray he flattered only to ruin and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
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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 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 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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It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.
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