“It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.”
“Majorian presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honor of the human species.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.”
Source: The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.”
“[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion; and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1: Complete in Eight Volumes
“In the most rigorous [Roman] laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.”
Source: The Modern Library Essential World History 4-Book Bundle: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged); Montcalm and Wolfe; History of the Conquest of Mexico; The Naval War of 1812
“Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.”
Source: The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[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.”
Source: The Student's Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Edited in Seven Volumes with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Index
“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.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.”
Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages
“The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." - I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.”
Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages
“[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.”
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)
“[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy . . .”
“But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the returns of filial piety.”
Source: Guizot's Gibbon: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved the peace by a constant preparation for war.”
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition
“[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.”
Source: The Modern Library Essential World History 4-Book Bundle: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged); Montcalm and Wolfe; History of the Conquest of Mexico; The Naval War of 1812
“The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade . . .”
“Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“The revenge of a guilty woman is implacable.”
Source: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Both Moscow and [Kiev], the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes [by the Tartars]; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on the character of the Russians.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.”
Source: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The Modern Library Collection (Complete and Unabridged)
“Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince . . .”
Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages
“The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.”
Source: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.”
“Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Edited in Seven Volumes with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Index
“Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.”
Source: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V3: the History Focus
“When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter.”
Source: The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected; that victory is the fruit of moral as well as military virtue; and that the prince, and even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“[Whole] generations may be swept away by the madness of kings in the space of a single hour.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edward Gibbon (Illustrated)
“[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.”
Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages
“[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.”
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition
