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When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.

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
Pride
Increased
Discreet
Taste
Justified
Degenerates
Age
Favourite
Preserved
Religion
Reward
Throne
Grecian
History
Purity
Declared
Ascended
Manners
Impatience
Julian
Rewards
Emperor
Syrian
Embrace
Thrones
Degenerate

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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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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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The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.
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Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
Edward Gibbon
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
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The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
Edward Gibbon
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To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.
Edward Gibbon
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
Edward Gibbon
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
Edward Gibbon
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It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
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[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.
Edward Gibbon
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It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome could support the institution of six vestals but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity.
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A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.
Edward Gibbon