Edward Gibbon

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.

— Edward Gibbon

I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

— Edward Gibbon

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

It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

— Edward Gibbon

Decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.

— Edward Gibbon

It was here [at the age of seventeen] that I suspended my religious inquiries.

— Edward Gibbon

I saw and loved.

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

— Edward Gibbon

The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers...has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.

— Edward Gibbon

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot 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

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

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

— Edward Gibbon

I was never less alone than when by myself.

— Edward Gibbon