The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
– Edward Gibbon
The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:
Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;
Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;
Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;
Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;
Increased demand to live off the state.
– Edward Gibbon
I make it a point never to argue with people for whose opinion I have no respect.
– Edward Gibbon
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of
mankind.
– Edward Gibbon
We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.
– Edward Gibbon
To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.
– Edward Gibbon
Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit
only of habit and discipline.
– Edward Gibbon
My early and invincible love of reading – I would not exchange for the treasures of India.
– Edward Gibbon
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to
magnify the evils, of the present times.
– Edward Gibbon
Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
– Edward Gibbon
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and
the beginning of the final loneliness.
– Edward Gibbon
Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
– Edward Gibbon
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and
they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to
give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was
freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
– Edward Gibbon
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
– Edward Gibbon
Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: The first from his
teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
– Edward Gibbon
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know
no way of judging of the future but by the past.
– Edward Gibbon
Style is the image of character.
– Edward Gibbon
Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been
refused.
– Edward Gibbon
A false modesty is the meanest species of pride.
– Edward Gibbon
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is
nominated by the executive.
– Edward Gibbon
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on
their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted
characters.
– Edward Gibbon
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
– Edward Gibbon
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
– Edward Gibbon
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of
composition, I resolved to write a book.
– Edward Gibbon
War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
– Edward Gibbon
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
– Edward Gibbon
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.
– Edward Gibbon
To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations.
– Edward Gibbon
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
– Edward Gibbon
But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions
where it is almost superfluous.
– Edward Gibbon
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
– Edward Gibbon
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as
useful.
– Edward Gibbon
Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary
monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.
– Edward Gibbon