Top 200 Edward Gibbon Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.”

— Edward Gibbon

152. “Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.”

— Edward Gibbon

153. “But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition.”

— Edward Gibbon

154. “Such, indeed, is the policy of civil war: severely to remember injuries, and to forget the most important services. Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”

— Edward Gibbon

155. “Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.”

— Edward Gibbon

156. “The Greek, the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities. The elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful, and almost a regular form, to the polytheism of the ancient world.”

— Edward Gibbon

157. “The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.”

— Edward Gibbon

158. “Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.”

— Edward Gibbon

159. “Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life.”

— Edward Gibbon

160. “All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

162. “It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.”

— Edward Gibbon

163. “The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.”

— Edward Gibbon

164. “It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.”

— Edward Gibbon

165. “On solemn festivals, Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus; and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher, who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public or the improvement of his own mind.”

— Edward Gibbon

166. “In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.”

— Edward Gibbon

167. “The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

169. “The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind...”

— Edward Gibbon

170. “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.”

— Edward Gibbon

171. “A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.”

— Edward Gibbon

172. “It is easy for faction and calumny to shed their poison on the administration of the best of princes, and to accuse even their virtues, by artfully confounding them with those vices to which they bear the nearest affinity.”

— Edward Gibbon

173. “Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.”

— Edward Gibbon

174. “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. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.”

— Edward Gibbon

175. “The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.”

— Edward Gibbon

176. “The land was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

178. “The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.”

— Edward Gibbon

179. “The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North; their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.”

— Edward Gibbon

180. “Under a democratical government the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.”

— Edward Gibbon

181. “History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.”

— Edward Gibbon

182. “Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.”

— Edward Gibbon

183. “But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.”

— Edward Gibbon

184. “The revenge of a guilty woman is implacable.”

— Edward Gibbon

185. “The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.”

— Edward Gibbon

186. “Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.”

— Edward Gibbon

187. “But as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose; we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. It.”

— Edward Gibbon

188. “Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a vile habit, and loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat to the Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes of his abominable reign. “Wilt thou govern better?” were the last words of the despair of Phocas.”

— Edward Gibbon

189. “Antoninus diffused order and tranquility over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

— Edward Gibbon

190. “Does there exist a single instance of a saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?”

— Edward Gibbon

191. “The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history.”

— Edward Gibbon

192. “Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind.”

— Edward Gibbon

193. “It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.”

— Edward Gibbon

194. “The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.”

— Edward Gibbon

195. “Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless, and their presence importunate, endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring countries.”

— Edward Gibbon

196. “Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.”

— Edward Gibbon

197. “The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.”

— Edward Gibbon

198. “The ambassadors had encamped on the edge of a large morass.”

— Edward Gibbon

199. “Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.”

— Edward Gibbon

200. “The attack of a man, equipped with erudition, and of perfectly sober judgment, on cherished beliefs and revered institutions, must always excite the interest, by irritating the passions, of men.”

— Edward Gibbon