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[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to 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
Peace
War
Pusillanimous
Cannot
Betrays
Aversion
Honorable
Betray
Sovereign
Secure

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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
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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.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
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The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.
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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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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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A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.
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