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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.

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
Operations
Restrain
Vices
Precarious
Inspire
Wisest
Laws
Operation
Virtue
Imperfect
Law
Seldom
Cannot
Always
Vice

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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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A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
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Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
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The fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.
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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.
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In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
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If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.
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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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A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
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Style is the image of character.
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Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion.
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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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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.
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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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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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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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.
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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
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