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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
Would
West
Empire
Loss
Survived
Virtue
Empires
Annihilated
Hours
Rome
Conquerors
Freedom
Honour
Barbarian
History
Total
Restored
Stills
Hour
Barbarians
Still
Destruction
Conqueror

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The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
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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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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.
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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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I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.
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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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Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.
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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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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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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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The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.
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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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In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
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[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
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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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