Years Quotes by Edward Gibbon

Both Moscow and [Kiev], the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes [by the Tartars]; a temporary ruin, less fatal…

— Edward Gibbon

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred…

— Edward Gibbon

[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

Freedom is the first wish of our heart; freedom is the first blessing of nature; and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary…

— Edward Gibbon

It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised…

— Edward Gibbon

Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes…

— Edward Gibbon

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of…

— Edward Gibbon

The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the…

— Edward Gibbon

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which,…

— Edward Gibbon

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in…

— Edward Gibbon

The emperor of the East was no longer guided by the wisdom and authority of his elder brother, whose death happened towards…

— Edward Gibbon

The comparative view of the powers of the magistrates, in two remarkable instances, is alone sufficient to represent the whole system of…

— Edward Gibbon

The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved…

— Edward Gibbon

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

In less than seven years the vestiges of the Gothic invasion were almost obliterated, and the city appeared to resume its former…

— Edward Gibbon

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a…

— Edward Gibbon

Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the…

— Edward Gibbon

At the hour of midnight the Salerian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the…

— Edward Gibbon