Jasper > Jasper's Quotes

“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.”
― Edward Gibbon

“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”
― Edward Gibbon

“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”
― Edward Gibbon

“To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.”
― Edward Gibbon

“The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“The history of empires is the history of human misery.”
― Edward Gibbon

“The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:

Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;

Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;

Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;

Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;

Increased demand to live off the state.”
― Edward Gibbon

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
― Edward Gibbon

“The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.”
― Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1

“In the beginning was simplicity.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
― Dante Alighieri