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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.

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
Time
Battle
Manners
Suspend
Reader
Event
Insensible
Objects
Narrative
Interruptions
Events
Variety
Accidental
Courses
Curiosity
Intrigue
Peruse
Course
Court
Transient
Censured
Law
Importance
Eager
Intrigues
History
Laws
Readers
Interruption

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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
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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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A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.
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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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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
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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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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
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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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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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[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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The union of the Roman empire was dissolved its genius was humbled in the dust and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.
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Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
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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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The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
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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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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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