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Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.

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
Monarchy
Distress
Extreme
Extremes
Virtue
Free
Declining
People
Unites
Factions

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Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.
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[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.
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The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
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Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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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 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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Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
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Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
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Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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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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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 single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .
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[The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny . . .
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If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
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All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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