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The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.

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
Life
Longer
Arts
Multitudes
Progress
Soldier
Corrupt
Cities
Large
Soldiers
Within
City
Commerce
Manufactures
State
Habit
Walls
Insensibly
Society
Citizens
Habits
Collects
Art
Wall
Improve
Adorn
States
Military
Civil
Multitude

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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 Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.
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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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The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured form the adjacent cities a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch.
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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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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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[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
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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.
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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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[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
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In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
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Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
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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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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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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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