Top 200 Edward Gibbon Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Imam Hussain’s sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.”

— Edward Gibbon

2. “Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

5. “We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win.”

— Edward Gibbon

6. “Majorian presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honor of the human species.”

— Edward Gibbon

7. “I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.”

— Edward Gibbon

8. “I was never less alone than when by myself.”

— Edward Gibbon

9. “The history of empires is the history of human misery.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

11. “Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.”

— Edward Gibbon

12. “It was 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

13. “Religion is a mere question of geography.”

— Edward Gibbon

14. “But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.”

— Edward Gibbon

15. “The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.”

— Edward Gibbon

16. “Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

18. “Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”

— Edward Gibbon

19. “Freedom is the first wish of our heart; freedom is the first blessing of nature; and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Edward Gibbon

22. “A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.”

— Edward Gibbon

23. “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

24. “Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.”

— Edward Gibbon

25. “In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.”

— Edward Gibbon

26. “Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.”

— Edward Gibbon

27. “Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.”

— Edward Gibbon

28. “The best and most important part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.”

— Edward Gibbon

29. “Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.”

— Edward Gibbon

30. “Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

32. “My early and invincible love of reading – I would not exchange for the treasures of India.”

— Edward Gibbon

Featured in: Reading Quotes

33. “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.”

— Edward Gibbon

34. “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.”

— Edward Gibbon

Featured in: Reading Quotes

35. “The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.”

— Edward Gibbon

36. “Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies.”

— Edward Gibbon

37. “To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.”

— Edward Gibbon

38. “Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.”

— Edward Gibbon

39. “Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.”

— Edward Gibbon

40. “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.”

— Edward Gibbon

41. “The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered, as a singular event in the history of the human mind.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

43. “I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.”

— Edward Gibbon

44. “Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.”

— Edward Gibbon

45. “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

— Edward Gibbon

46. “A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.”

— Edward Gibbon

47. “The Indian who fells the tree that he may gather the fruit, and the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce are actuated by the same impulse of savage nature, and relinquish for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the most important blessings.”

— Edward Gibbon

48. “In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.”

— Edward Gibbon

49. “The first of earthly blessings, independence.”

— Edward Gibbon

50. “I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: “My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.” – I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.”

— Edward Gibbon