Edward Gibbon Quotes

• Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade.

  Edward Gibbon

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• To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Reading

• It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

  Edward Gibbon

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• I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.

  Edward Gibbon

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• It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).

  Edward Gibbon

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• To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.

  Edward Gibbon

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• The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

  Edward Gibbon

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• The Huns…chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world.

  Edward Gibbon

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• In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.

  Edward Gibbon

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• The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

  Edward Gibbon

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• If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.

  Edward Gibbon

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• Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Books, Faithful, Mirrors, Reading

• Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

  Edward Gibbon

  Topics in Genius

  Tags in Solitude, School

• Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Corruption, Infallible, Symptom

• It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

  Edward Gibbon

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Action

• The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Author, Performance

• A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Heart

• History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Topics in History

  Tags in Mankind

• The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

  Edward Gibbon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Principles, Constitution

• The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

  Edward Gibbon

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  Tags in Beginning, Loneliness

Edward Gibbon (49)

Birth:	27th April, 1737
Death:	16th January, 1794
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Politician

About

Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, Surrey, England. He was an English historian and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of organized religion. He published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature in 1761, which produced an initial taste of celebrity and distinguished him, in Paris at least, as a man of letters.

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