The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were… — 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
[Courage] arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength . . . — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
“...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or… — 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
The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition,… — 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