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If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.
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
Loss
Survived
Virtue
Empires
Annihilated
Hours
Rome
Conquerors
Freedom
Honour
Barbarian
History
Total
Restored
Stills
Hour
Barbarians
Still
Destruction
Conqueror
Would
West
Empire
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor.
Edward Gibbon
I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
Edward Gibbon
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
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
[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.
Edward Gibbon
The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.
Edward Gibbon
The fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.
Edward Gibbon
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Edward Gibbon
So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.
Edward Gibbon
[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.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.
Edward Gibbon
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
History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
Edward Gibbon
Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
Edward Gibbon
Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
Edward Gibbon
Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.
Edward Gibbon
The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .
Edward Gibbon
[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
Edward Gibbon
It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
Edward Gibbon