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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.

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
Since
Pope
Times
Primitive
Persons
Exposed
Opposition
Powers
Envy
Wealth
Violence
Popes

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I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
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Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
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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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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
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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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A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
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[The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny . . .
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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.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.
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If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.
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[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
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Freedom is the first wish of our heart freedom is the first blessing of nature and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years
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Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.
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A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.
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