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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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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Cease
Secure
Europe
Since
Future
Must
Barbarous
Barbarians
Conquer

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Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers the second, more personal and important, from himself.
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It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected that victory is the fruit of moral as well as military virtue and that the prince, and even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.
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A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.
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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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Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.
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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
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The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.
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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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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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If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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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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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
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The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
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It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
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