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Freedom is the first wish of our heart freedom is the first blessing of nature and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years

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
Nature
Advance
Firsts
Chains
First
Blessing
Heart
Unless
Years
Passion
Interest
Freedom
Voluntary
Wish
Bind

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.
Edward Gibbon
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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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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[The] penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety.
Edward Gibbon
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So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.
Edward Gibbon
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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
Edward Gibbon
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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
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Active valour may often be the present of nature but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
Edward Gibbon
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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
Edward Gibbon
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
Edward Gibbon
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The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition and may therefore deserve to be considered, as a singular event in the history of the human mind.
Edward Gibbon
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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
Edward Gibbon
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
Edward Gibbon
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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
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon