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A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.

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
Race
Discord
Desire
Confess
May
Spoil
Human
Conquest
Humans
Vanity
Philosopher
Discords
Rational
Deplore
Eternal
Provocation

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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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Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
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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.
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Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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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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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
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Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
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Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
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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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[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.
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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.
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The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.
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[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
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If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
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[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
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