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[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.

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
Every
Sufficiently
Acts
However
Military
Blood
Virtue
Abounds
Age
Renown
Science
Destitute

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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
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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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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
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It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
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The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.
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The union of the Roman empire was dissolved its genius was humbled in the dust and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.
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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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Genius may anticipate the season of maturity but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.
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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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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 history of empires is the record of human misery the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
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Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
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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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So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.
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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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The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.
Edward Gibbon
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It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.
Edward Gibbon
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The author himself is the best judge of his own performance none has so deeply meditated on the subject none is so sincerely interested in the event.
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