Edward Gibbon (1737–94) was an English rationalist historian, politician, bibliophile, and man of letters. He was the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88,) which is generally regarded as a monumental work of literature as well as historical analysis.
Born in Putney, Surrey, he was educated at Westminster and Oxford’s Magdalen College.
On a visit to Rome in 1764, he decided to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vol., 1776–88,) the work for which he continues to be best known. Acclaimed as literature as well as history, it narrates the continuity of the Roman Empire from the age of the Roman soldier Trajan in the 2nd century CE to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Although its chapters provoked controversy for their critical account of the spread of Christianity, the conquests of Islam, and the Crusades, it is still read for its clarity, accuracy, and brilliant style.
Gibbon entered Parliament in 1774 and served as commissioner of trade and plantations. After 1788, he spent much of the remainder of his life with John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield, who published Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works (1796.)
A bibliophile, Gibbon termed his 7,000 volume-library “the foundation of my works, and the best comfort of my life.”
Gibbon’s Autobiography (1896,) a classic of the genre, includes a discussion of his return to Protestantism and his forbidden love for Suzanne Curchod. She subsequently became the French-Swiss salonist Madame Necker, the mother of Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, commonly known as Madame de Staël, a French woman of letters and historian.
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The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Criticism, Critics
If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Sorrow
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Duty
I was never less alone than when by myself.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Loneliness
I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Opinions, Arguments
The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Public
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 last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
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
Topics: Education
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: The Military, Navy, Army
Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Fanaticism
Vicissitude of fortune which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, but buries empires and cities in a common grave.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Luck
I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Wealth, Economics, Economy, Wishes
Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Beauty
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Reading, Books
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
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Learning, Ignorance
The first of earthly blessings, independence.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Independence, One liners
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
—Edward Gibbon
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Lawyers, Law
My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Profanity, Vulgarity, Swearing
A false modesty is the meanest species of pride.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Modesty
The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Facts
The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing, Writing
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
—Edward Gibbon
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Religion
In old age the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts, who sing hallelujahs above the clouds; and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Hope
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Books, Reading
History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: History, Historians
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: Tragedy, Disasters, Sympathy
The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.
—Edward Gibbon
Topics: History
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