Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

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 Quote

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

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 Quote

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

Style is the image of character.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

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 Quote

The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
- Edward Gibbon Quote

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
- Edward Gibbon Quote