Quotes from Edward Gibbon

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

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

The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.

It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.

My early and invincible love of reading--I would not exchange for the treasures of India.

In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

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

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

I was never less alone than when by myself.,

So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.

The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved the peace by a constant preparation for war.

And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

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

But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.

[F]lattery is the prolific parent of falsehood.

The best and most important part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.

So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

Style is the image of character.