Edward Gibbon Quotes

Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade.

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

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

It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).

To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.