The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and… — 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
It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised… — 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
Both Moscow and [Kiev], the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes [by the Tartars]; a temporary ruin, less fatal… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected; that victory is the fruit of moral as well… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray; he… — Edward Gibbon Copy Share Image
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted… — 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