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[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.

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
Fruitless
Provoke
Arabs
Provoking
Attack
Dangerous
People

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[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.
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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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The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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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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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.
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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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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
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History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
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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.
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