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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
People
Unites
Factions
Monarchy
Distress
Extreme
Extremes
Virtue
Free
Declining

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In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
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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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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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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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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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[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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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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Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
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[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.
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[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
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[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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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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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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