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Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.

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
Cannot
Unless
Hopes
Presumed
May
Thousand
Height
Enlarge
Human
Changed
Originals
Barbarism
Humans
Four
Original
Apprehension
Years
Face
Determine
Safely
People
Faces
Towards
Advances
Experience
Perfection
Diminish
Apprehensions
Nature
Species
Aspire
Relapse

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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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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.
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.
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Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
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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.
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The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.
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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.
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Style is the image of character.
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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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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.
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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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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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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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