Quotes from Edward Gibbon

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

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

as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

The history of empires is the history of human misery.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

The army is the only order of men sufficiently united to concur in the same sentiments, and powerful enough to impose them on the rest of their fellow-citizens; but the temper of soldiers, habituated at once to violence and to slavery, renders them very unfit guardians of a legal, or even a civil constitution.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

Edward Gibbon, in his classic work on the fall of the Roman Empire, describes the Roman era's declension as a place where "bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.

The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind.

Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.

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

Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.

The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.

Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .

If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.

Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre.

A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.

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.

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

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

The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and experience.