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[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.

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
Without
Fifth
Years
Reached
Thirty
West
Courage
Dissolute
Year
Attaining
Age
Feeble
Reason
Emperor

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The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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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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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
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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.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
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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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The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.
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I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition.
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History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
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A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.
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It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
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