I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
Edward Gibbon
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Edward Gibbon quotes
Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.
I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
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.
I was never less alone than when by myself.
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.
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
Style is the image of character.
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.
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
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.
The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking,unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win.
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