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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.

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
Thought
Human
Transitory
Humans
Unworthy
Scenes
Vain
Greatness
Scene
Serious

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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.
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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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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .
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The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.
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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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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
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As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
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The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province [Britain] was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean.
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
Edward Gibbon
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.
Edward Gibbon
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When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.
Edward Gibbon