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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
Vices
Restrain
Inspire
Precarious
Laws
Wisest
Virtue
Operation
Law
Imperfect
Cannot
Seldom
Always
Vice
Operations
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
Edward Gibbon
[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.
Edward Gibbon
Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
Edward Gibbon
The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.
Edward Gibbon
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
Edward Gibbon
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
Edward Gibbon
The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.
Edward Gibbon
[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
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Edward Gibbon
[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
Edward Gibbon
It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
