Quotes by
Edward Gibbon |
1737-1794 , English historian
English historian and scholar best known as the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), a continuous narrative from the 2nd century CE to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. | 23 quotes | 3,621 visits |
Quotations
| • | I make it a point never to argue with people for whose opinion I have no respect. 13 |
| • | Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. 10 |
| • | Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty. 8 |
| • | Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. 7 |
| • | The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. 7 |
| • | Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself. 6 |
| • | In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome. 5 |
| • | Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule. 5 |
| • | He had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute. 5 |
| • | Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive. 5 |
| • | Generations may be swept away by the madness of kings in the space of a single hour. 4 |
| • | It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy. 4 |
| • | The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. 4 |
| • | All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance. 4 |
| • | Wit and valour are qualities that are more easily ascertained than virtue, or the love of wisdom. 4 |
| • | There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. 3 |
| • | Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. 3 |
| • | The history of empires is the history of human misery. 3 |
| • | War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice. 3 |
| • | My early and invincible love of reading... I would not exchange for the treasures of India. 3 |
| • | The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. 3 |
| • | It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. 3 |
| • | The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. 3 |
