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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.

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
Rational
Result
Confidence
Results
Knowledge
Experience

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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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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In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon
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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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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
Edward Gibbon
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
Edward Gibbon
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In old age the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts, who sing hallelujahs above the clouds and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
Edward Gibbon
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
Edward Gibbon
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
Edward Gibbon
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When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.
Edward Gibbon
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A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice his profusion, of liberality his obstinacy, of firmness.
Edward Gibbon
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In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.
Edward Gibbon
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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
Edward Gibbon
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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
Edward Gibbon
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According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .
Edward Gibbon
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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
Edward Gibbon
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The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.
Edward Gibbon
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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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