The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary considerations: he gratified his resentment and ambition; he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country. — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants;… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The ancients were destitute of many of the conveniences of life which have been invented or improved by the progress of industry;… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The barbarians of Germany had felt, and still dreaded, the arms of the young Caesar; his soldiers were the companions of his… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The comparative view of the powers of the magistrates, in two remarkable instances, is alone sufficient to represent the whole system of… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The retirement of Athanasius, which ended only with the life of Constantius, was spent, for the most part, in the society of… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival at Antioch; withdrew… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Yet the people, and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment of the business of peace and war, presumed to… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation,… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
It is scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption.… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government, as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
History, in fact, is no more than a list of the crimes of humanity, human follies and accidents — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives; and a nice… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every… — 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
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