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The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved the peace by a constant preparation for war.

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
War
Added
Preparation
Terror
Dignity
Emperors
Constant
Preserved
Weight
Emperor
Arms
Roman
Peace
Moderation

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Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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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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The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
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As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him brave as a lion yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood.
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History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
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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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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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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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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
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The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.
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[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.
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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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