The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power:… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation,… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses,… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The active, insatiate principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and the wages of industry; and as soon as… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
That country [Carthage] was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws;… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The sectaries of a persecuted religion, depressed by fear, animated with resentment, and perhaps heated by enthusiasm, are seldom in a proper temper of… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
It is the common calamity of old age to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West:… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of Heaven while they are employed in measuring… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image