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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.
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
Stand
Moderate
Sides
Moderates
Fire
Controversy
Middle
Exposed
Open
Pity
Party
Field
Always
Ground
Fields
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
Edward Gibbon
Religion is a mere question of geography.
Edward Gibbon
[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
Edward Gibbon
[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
Edward Gibbon
[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
Edward Gibbon
The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
Edward Gibbon
Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.
Edward Gibbon
On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
Edward Gibbon
According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
Edward Gibbon
[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.
Edward Gibbon
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
Genius may anticipate the season of maturity but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.
Edward Gibbon
[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.
Edward Gibbon
But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.
Edward Gibbon
The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.
Edward Gibbon
[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
Edward Gibbon
But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .
Edward Gibbon
