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The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.

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
Known
Opposites
Rapid
Space
Embrace
Rapids
Lying
Perfection
Hurry
Desire
Became
Ruling
Soul
Lies
Mediocrity
Reason
Cold
Passions
Wells
Violence
Extremes
Well
Passion
Opposite
Embraces

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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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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bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.
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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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[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . .
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The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .
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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.
Edward Gibbon
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The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
Edward Gibbon
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We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
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To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.
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Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Edward Gibbon
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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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 history of empires is the record of human misery the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
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So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.
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But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .
Edward Gibbon
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The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
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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.
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