Edward Gibbon Quotes

Recluse fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate . . .

[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.

[The Goths'] poverty was incurable; since the most liberal donatives were soon dissipated in wasteful luxury, and the most fertile estates became barren in their hands.

But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

Amiable weaknesses of human nature.

It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.

The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.

The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.

The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.

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

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events

[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.

It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).

The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.

Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.

Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.

[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy . . .

Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .

Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.

Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.

But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .

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.

The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.

It was no longer esteemed infamous for a Roman to survive his honor and independence.

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.

The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.

Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.

The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and experience.

[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.

If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.

[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.

Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade . . .

[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.

The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history

In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.

The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.

[The] liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute . . .

Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre.

[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.

But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times . . .

Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.

[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.

Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.

Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man.