The wind and waves are very hasty, but they are much more steady than mankind.Edward Gibbon
History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.Edward Gibbon
The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.Edward Gibbon
We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contests, and you must win.Edward Gibbon
I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.Edward Gibbon
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 final polish to my work.Edward Gibbon
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.Edward Gibbon
I still continued to read, to scribble, and occasionally to converse, and wished for such a friend as could sympathize with my tastes and pursuits.Edward Gibbon
War, which under the guidance of barbarians, is the public and authorized version of piracy ...Edward Gibbon
Beauty is more various and complex, more exposed to the accidents of disease and age, and less commonly and less conspicuously diffused, than the perception of the understanding.Edward Gibbon
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.Edward Gibbon
While that great body was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol.Edward Gibbon
The work that I have described might have been executed by a contemporary Artist, but the lapse of six hundred years proclaims itself even in the portraits of ecclesiastical saints and martyrs.Edward Gibbon
Such an edifice as St. Peter's of Rome, the costly and ostentatious work of the Popes, in the meridian of their wealth and power, surpasses indeed, in magnitude and decoration, the humble simplicity of the purest ages of Christianity.Edward Gibbon