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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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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Mercy
Humane
Safety
Penalties
Large
Vicious
Public
Empire
Theorist
Practice
Delightful
Abolished
Law
Empires
Theorists
Community
Seldom
Penalty
Death
Consistent
Roman

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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.
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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
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Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray he flattered only to ruin and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome could support the institution of six vestals but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity.
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
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The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
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The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .
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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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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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