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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.

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
Disappoint
Tends
Progress
Purpose
Despotism

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Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.
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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
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Active valour may often be the present of nature but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
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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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[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.
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The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.
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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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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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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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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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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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Style is the image of character.
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The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
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And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor.
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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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.
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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
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