"Gibbon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prize Essays, struggled for India Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and 'realised a fortune in twenty years.' He possessed, further, a taciturnity and solemnity; of depth, or else of dulness. How singular for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved; whose father, keeping most probably his own gig, 'would not hear of such a union,'—to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod sitting in the high places of the world, as Minister's Madame, and 'Necker ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is true, a game will probably give at least as much pleasure as a book. Nor must we measure the pleasure of reading altogether by the language of the genuine scholar. It is not every one who could say, like Gibbon, that he would not exchange his love of reading for all the wealth of the Indies. Very many would agree with him; but Gibbon was a man with an intense natural love of knowledge, and the weak health of his early life intensified this predominant passion. But while the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... morning of this day a very gallant piece of work was carried out on our Ypres front by a storming party which was led by Co.-Sergt.-Major Gibbon of the 5th Battn. Northumberland Fusiliers. On the previous evening the enemy had gained possession of some buildings within our line. A gun was brought up by a cleverly-concealed route to the closest range, the buildings were battered ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... combats of the amphitheatre floated for the first time the awning of silk, the immense velarium of a thousand colors, woven from the rarest and richest products of the East, to protect the people from the sun" (Gibbon). ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... stirred in him of late by his historical reading. The strifes and feuds and violences of the early Church returned to weigh upon him—the hair-splitting superstition, the selfish passion for power. He recalled Gibbon's lamentation over the age of the Antonines, and Mommsen's grave doubt whether, taken as a whole, the area once covered by the Roman Empire can be said to be substantially happier now than in the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or the "Fasti Hellenici" of Clinton, it was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast; but from the mould came the new coin, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people who live upon human flesh; and when they find herds of pigs, droves of cattle, or flocks of sheep in the woods, they cut off the haunches of the men and the breasts of the women, and these they regard as great dainties;" in other words they prefer the shepherd to his flock. Gibbon who quotes this passage says on it: "If in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate, in the period of the Scottish history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life. Such reflections ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Order, describing it as the most ancient in Europe, and quoting the names of eminent men who had won the ribbon of the Order in times past. The Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, William the Silent, Galileo, Christopher Columbus, and the historian Gibbon appeared on the list. The Order was next bestowed on an Admiral, who held a command in the South ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... University is a guild of Masters, the degree is the 'step' by which the distinction of becoming a full member of it is attained. Gibbon wrote a century ago that 'the use of academical degrees is visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations, in which an apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his skill, and his licence ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... Gentile fulness there was to be one strange exception—that was in the Turkish nation. This nation is set forth by the prophet under the figure of the River Euphrates. In their first appearance they were to be very numerous. In the eleventh century they began to invade Europe. The historian Gibbon, speaking of them, says: "Myriads of Turkish horsemen overspread the whole Greek empire, until at last Constantinople fell into their hands." From 1453 till now have they held this grand capital. John, in Rev. ix., pictures this invasion, and speaks ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... social order of England, somewhere in his writings, as the "iron hands of the law." There was not only the law; there was its arbitrary administration. We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament; Locke, driven from his chair; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to flight; Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to the Tower. The task would be a long one, were we to count over the victims of the statute against seditious ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... possible that they may recall to mind my labours for unity. Even those writings, which I published since my calamity, have not been diverted from the same peaceful object." If ever any Protestant divines deserved the reproach cast by Mr. Gibbon,[029] on the first reformers in general, "of being ambitious to succeed the tyrants whom they had dethroned," they were the members of the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... "I can't get out!" lasts as long as he does, while he progresses with every flying moment; and conversely, the most unhappy man is the idle and irreligious one. Happiness was mingled with sorrow when Gibbon penned this most interesting but melancholy passage on the termination of twenty years' incessant labour, and which should give us a deep insight into ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... becomes civilized, the Wilderness will offer no resource to the fugitive, and the back-woods of the new colonies will no longer shelter the runaway, or outlaw of society, or the innocent patriot fleeing from the pursuit of his country's tyrants. Gibbon gives an affecting description of the fugitive Roman, who found Rome's omnipresent tyrant in every clime whither he fled, on every soil paced by his trembling foot. Before this time arrives, let us hope liberty will have settled down, with ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... communication from the Secretary of the Navy, accompanied by the first part of Lieutenant Herndon's report of the exploration of the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries, made by him in connection with lieutenant Gardner Gibbon, under instructions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most loathsome ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... couple of volumes, and went with them to the shelves, where he placed them, without thought, next to the Gibbon. But in a moment he noticed the title, and moved them to another place. He had become absent. Thyrza, remaining by the case, followed his movements with her eyes. As ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... splendid series of matinees extending over two months, Professor William P. Jones danced the whole of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The first two volumes were danced in slow time, to the accompaniment of two flutes and a lyre. The poses were statuesque rather than graceful, and the gestures had in them a great deal of the antique. But, beginning with the story of the barbarian ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... 8th August, 1787, Gibbon stayed there on his arrival from Lausanne with the completion of his "History," and wrote to Lord Sheffield to apprise him of the fact. In 1802 Isaac D'Israeli, the author of Curiosities of Literature and father of the famous Earl of Beaconsfield, stayed in the hotel after his honeymoon. ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... their artillery to move with these two divisions, and to be ready to cover a forced crossing. The division whose camps at Falmouth were most easily seen by the enemy from across the river (it happened to be Gibbon's) to be left in camp to do picket and provost duty. The Third Corps would be available in case the enemy himself attempted a crossing. Gibbon to be ready to join the ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... are ourselves not famous for it, for we are a passionate people; the Germans are not—they are not a passionate people—a people celebrated for their oaths: we are. The Germans have many excellent historic writers, we—'tis true we have Gibbon. You have been reading Gibbon—what ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the Holy Rood. But the Coustans of our story never lived or ruled on land or sea, and his predecessor, Muselinus, is altogether unknown to Byzantine annals, while their interlaced history reads more like a page of the Arabian Nights than of Gibbon. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... your readers, who are, like myself, occasional verifiers of references, will perhaps thank me for pointing out a false reference, that I have just discovered in one of Gibbon's notes: ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... b). Gibbon (Miscellaneous Works, iii., 544., ed. 1815) says, "B. is my old and familiar acquaintance, a frequent companion in my post-chaise. His Latinity is eloquent, his manner is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... although afterwards applied to any heretic or atheist. He made many changes at Meccah and was the first who had a train of camels laden with snow for his refreshment along a measured road of 700 miles (Gibbon, chapt. lii.). He died of an accident when hunting: others say he was poisoned after leaving his throne to his sons Musa al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid. The name means "Heaven-directed" and must not be confounded with the title of the twelfth Shi'ah Imm Mohammed Abu al-Ksim born ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... arrangement to take Red Brae for three or four months. There would be plenty of room for you, and your father and Theo too," she continued as he remained silent; "and it would be so nice for us to be together, and our old nurse Mrs. Gibbon—you know Mrs. Gibbon, dear—would help us to take care ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the past are the names of Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Addison, Gibbon, Collins, Wilson, John Hampden, and John Foxe, author of the Book of Martyrs. The ecclesiastical students included two cardinals, four archbishops, and about forty bishops; and my brother would have added to the Roll of Honour the name of our rector, the Rev. Thomas ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... twenty years of his life. Froude himself would have been the first to repudiate the idea that history is philosophy teaching by examples, or that an historian has necessarily a greater insight into the problems of the present than any other observant student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once wrote, "believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too civilised for war, and the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... is expressed by Pomponius Mela, 1. iii, c. 6 (he wrote under Claudius), that, by the success of the Roman arms, the island and its savage inhabitants would soon be better known. It is amusing enough to peruse such passages in the midst of London.—Gibbon: c. i. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... but has gone carefully through the entire series of the Byzantine writers who treat of the time, besides availing himself of the various modern works to which reference has been made above. If he has been sometimes obliged to draw conclusions from his authorities other than those drawn by Gibbon, and has deemed it right, in the interests of historic truth, to express occasionally his dissent from that writer's views, he must not be thought blind to the many and great excellencies which render the "Decline ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... relationship between Ethics and Theology. The principle of Benevolence in the human mind is, he thinks, an adequate source of moral approbation and disapprobation; and he takes no note of what even sceptics (Gibbon, for example) often dwell upon, the aid of the Theological sanction in enforcing duties imperfectly felt by the natural and unprompted sentiments ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... American short stories during the past few years may have observed with interest at rare intervals the work of Mr. Hutchison. In it there was always a promise of an achievement not unlike that of Perceval Gibbon, but a certain looseness of texture prevented Mr. Hutchison from being completely persuasive. In "Journey's End," however, it must be confessed that he has written a memorable sea story that is certainly equal at least to the better stories ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... writer—whose death literature has still reason to deplore—George Eliot; who, in her love for old hedgerows and barns and crumbling moss- grown walls, was a writer after Burke's own heart, whose novels he would have sat up all night to devour; for did he not deny with warmth Gibbon's statement that he had read all five volumes of Evelina in a day? 'The thing is impossible,' cried Burke; 'they took me three days doing nothing else.' Now, Evelina is a good novel, but Silas ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... religion by the cultured element of Roman society in that enlightened era, which, designated as the golden age of literature, was adorned by such distinguished orators, philosophers, historians, poets and naturalists as Cicero, Tacitus, Pliny, Horace and Virgil. In reference to this subject, Gibbon, in his history of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I., chapter 2, says: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... Saxon settlers in England before the arrival of Hengist and Horsa seems settled, by the appointment of a "Comes Littoris Saxonici in Britannica."[191] The date of this official and imperial Roman document is fixed by Gibbon between A.D. 395 and 407. About forty years earlier we have—what is more to our present purpose—a notice by Ammianus Marcellinus of Saxons being leagued with the Picts and Scots, and invading the territories south of the Forth, which ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and Adam ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... agreeable man that France could produce. Still, however, though Grammont and Hamilton were of dispositions very different, the latter must have possessed talents peculiarly brilliant, and admirably adapted to coincide with, and display those of his brother-in-law to the utmost advantage. Gibbon extols the "ease and purity of Hamilton's inimitable style;" and in this he is supported by Voltaire, although he adds the censure, that the Grammont Memoirs are, in point of materials, the most trifling; he might also in truth have said, the most improper. The manners of the court of Charles ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... verified itself all the more completely, that, under the impulse of its creator's genius and in the absence of all material complications from without, that monarchy developed itself more purely and freely than any similar state. From Caesar's time, as the sequel will show and Gibbon has shown long ago, the Roman system had only an external coherence and received only a mechanical extension, while internally it became even with him utterly withered and dead. If in the early stages of the autocracy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bodkin, lined with fur from foxes' ribs. Round her waist was lightly attached a many-hued palace sash, with butterfly knots and long tassels. On her feet, she too wore a pair of low shoes made of deer leather. Her waist looked more than ever like that of a wasp, her back like that of the gibbon. Her bearing resembled that of a crane, her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... case of the average person. You do not approach the classics with gusto— anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured to yourself, when reading Gibbon's *Decline and Fall* in bed: "Well, I really must read one more chapter before I go to sleep!" Speaking generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure commensurate with their renown. You peruse them with a sense of duty, a sense of doing the right thing, a sense ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... narrative of my voyage, I must turn to other topics and give you some account of my life on board. My time has passed very pleasantly: I have read a good deal; I have nearly finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, am studying Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, and learning the concertina on the instrument of one of my fellow-passengers. Besides this, I have had the getting up and management of our choir. We practise three or four times a week; ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... language grammatically, is certain; but that he never rose to that excellence in those tongues to which his old tutor Mr. Wythe attained is equally certain. But of English literature he had drunk deeply. He had Bacon, Locke, Burke, Pope, Shakspeare, Swift, Hume, Gibbon, Johnson, Gillies, Addison, and Roscoe, within three feet of his elbow for the last forty years of his life. In English political history, such as might be gathered from the ordinary historians, and from such books as Baker's Chronicle ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... and pipe or a box of candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. "Oh, well," you think, "there will probably be some books in the town library. Maybe I can get Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time to read ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... drawn for the history of Pope Joan, who succeeded Leo IV. and preceded Benedict III., than many we yet discover, and he wants not grounds that doubts it." So thought Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, B. vii. Ch. 17. Gibbon, too, rejects it as fabulous. "Till the Reformation," he says, "the tale was repeated and believed without offence, and Joan's female statue long occupied her place among the Popes in the Cathedral of Sienna. She has been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... also had an efficient postal service, which was first instituted by Augustus and greatly improved by Hadrian. The former, as Gibbon states in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," placed upon all roads leading away from the golden milestone of the Forum, at short distances, relays of young men to serve as couriers, and later provided vehicles to hurry information from the provinces. These posts facilitated ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... and free libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the thing that comes to him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill which Carlyle felt when he hurried home with the six volumes of Gibbon's "History" under his arm, his mind just starving for want of food, to devour them at the rate of one a day? A book should be your very own before you can really get the taste of it, and unless you have worked for it, you will never have ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... obtain a month's reading at the Cockburnspath library. A very excellent library this was, and during the three years of his herding he worked his way pretty well through it. It was especially strong in history and standard theology, and in these departments included such works as Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Mitford's History of Greece, Russell's Modern Europe, Butler's Analogy, and Paley's Evidences. In biography and fiction it was less strong, but it had a complete set of the Waverley Novels in one of the early three-volume editions. When he went to Mr. M'Gregor's, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... grasping. Both thumb and great toe are opposable; but the foot is a true foot, and the hand a true hand, in anatomical structure. The face, hands, and feet have mainly lost the covering of hair. They have no tail, or rather its rudiments are concealed beneath the skin. These include the gibbon, the orang, the gorilla, ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... his burial was announced in the Chronicle of April 27. At this time (1765-6), Dr Johnson had reached the zenith of his fame; Gray was becoming popular; Smollett had written most of his novels; Goldsmith was about to present the world with his exquisite Vicar of Wakefield; Gibbon had returned to England from Rome with the idea of The Decline and Fall floating ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... says Gibbon, 'which borders on Sussex and the sea, was formerly overspread with the great forest Anderida; and even now retains the denomination of the Weald, or Woodland.' On the verge of this region, now diversified with the traces of civilization and culture, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... you very much in reading a MS. in a handwriting like mine?" I asked him one evening, on a sudden impulse at the end of a longish conversation whose subject was Gibbon's History. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... "Commentaries" also; Plutarch's "Lives" and Increase Mather's witches; all of Fielding in four stately quarto volumes; Sterne, stained and shabby; Congreve, in red morocco, richly gilt; Moliere, pocket size, in an English translation; Gibbon in sober ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... miscellaneous matter left by British troops when they were stationed on the British Columbian mainland. There was much rubbish on the shelves, but among the rubbish I found many good books. For instance, that winter I read solidly through Gibbon's Rome, and refreshed my early memories of Mahomet, of Alaric, and of Attila. Those who imported fresh elements into the old were even then my greatest interest. I preferred the destroyers to the destroyed, being rather on the side of the ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... he insisted on the necessity of taking some step to remove the apprehensions of the people, who began to think themselves in danger of being sacrificed to the security of foreign dominions. Mr. Gibbon, who spoke on the same side of the question, expatiated upon the absurdity of returning thanks for the prosecution of a war which had been egregiously mismanaged. "What!" said he, "are our thanks to be solemnly returned for defeats, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Department of the Platte, at Omaha, and General Alfred H. Terry, commanding the Department of Dakota, at St. Paul, started out to round up the Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull bands, in the Powder River and Big Horn Valley country of northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. General John Gibbon was to close in, with another column, from Fort Ellis, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... "The purple of three Emperors who have reigned at Constantinople will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes of the House of Courtenay" (Gibbon, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... deference to authority and universal custom may subdue the reason and understanding. The language and decision of Addison are adopted by Sir W. Blackstone in 'Commentaries on the Laws of England,' who shelters himself behind that celebrated author's sentiment; and Gibbon informs us that 'French and English lawyers of the present age [the latter half of the last century] allow the theory but deny the practice of witchcraft'—influenced doubtless by the spirit of the past legislation ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the 'Fairy Queen' as the most precious jewel of their coronet." Thus wrote Gibbon in his memoirs, and all must feel the beauty of the passage. Perhaps it is not too much to say that this nobility may claim another illustration from its ties of friendship and neighborhood with the family of Washington. It cannot doubt that hereafter the parish church of Brington ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... roll-call! Once bounded on the north by the British Channel and on the south by the Sahara Desert of Africa, on the east by the Euphrates and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Home of three civilizations. Owning all the then discovered world that was worth owning. Gibbon, in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," answers, "Dead." And the vacated seats of the ruined Coliseum, and the skeletons of the aqueduct, and the miasma of the Campagna, and the fragments of the marble baths, and the useless piers of the bridge Triumphalis, and the silenced forum, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... be doubted whether the principles on which the settlement of Australind was founded were in themselves of a sound and permanent nature. They were those propounded originally by Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and applied with extraordinary success to the formation and to the circumstances of the colony of South Australia. The most prominent features which they present are, — the concentration of population, and the high price ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Patty out for one thing: and then she wouldn't give away the ribbon to the fastest runner—the lads run a hundred yards to the bride, for ribbon and kiss, you know;—wasn't the ribbon she grudged, poor wench; but the fastest runner in Cairnhope town is that Will Gibbon, a nasty, ugly, slobbering chap, that was always after her, and Philip jealous of him; so she did for the best, and Will Gibbon safe to win it. But the village lads they didn't see the reason, and took it all to themselves. Was she better than their granddam? and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... are perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. Of these the variety is considerable; and many of their writers are now known. They delight our curiosity by opening new views, and light up in observing minds many projects of works, wanted in our own literature. GIBBON feasted on them; and while he turned them over with constant pleasure, derived accurate notions of works, which no student could himself have verified; of many works a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... what it was to the survivors of the last century. Severally, the innovators were not superior to the men of old. Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as accurate, Liebnitz as able, Freret as acute, Gibbon as masterly in the craft of composite construction. Nevertheless, in the second quarter of this century, a ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... is coeval with the foundation of Rome, but the number of the troops of which it was composed varied at different periods. It rarely exceeded six thousand men. Gibbon estimates the number at six thousand eight hundred and twenty-six men. For many centuries it was composed exclusively of Roman citizens. Up to the year B.C. 107, no one was permitted to serve among the regular troops ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I take the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... army. There was the making of a good rider in many of them, too; they only wanted ballast, for they knew no more of fear than Nelson did, and would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the Marsh Gibbon double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating Bullingdon hurdles. And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing as many scars as a vieux de la vieille, that were considered short of work ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Asia. We allude to this colony, because with it were found, at the time of the Argonautic expedition, proofs of the attention which Sesostris had paid to geography, and of the benefits which that science derived from him. "Tradition," Gibbon observes, "has affirmed, with some colour of reason, that Egypt planted on the Phasis a learned and polite colony, which manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical maps." All the information ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... positive external testimony whatsoever. He came at a fortunate time, when the stately yet not pompous or over-elaborated model of the latest Georgian prose, raised from early Georgian "drabness" by the efforts of Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke, but not proceeding to the extremes of any of the three, was still the academic standard; but when a certain freedom on the one side, and a certain grace and colour on the other, were being taken from the new experiments of nineteenth-century ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... become proverbial, and to describe a superior as rivalling Naushirvan in justice is a commonplace of flattery. The prophet Muhammad was born during his reign, and was proud of the fact. The alleged expedition of Naushirvan into India is discredited by the best modern writers. Gibbon tells the story of the wars between the two Khusrus and the Romans in his forty-sixth chapter, and a critical history of the reigns of both Khusru (Khosrau) I and Khusru II will be found in Professor Rawlinson's Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy (London, 1876). European authors have, until ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... out my meaning here and draw aid from comparative illustration, let me take my old friend of many years, Charles Gibbon. Gibbon was poor, very poor, in intellectual subtlety compared with Stevenson; he had none of his sweet, quaint, original fancy; he was no casuist; he was utterly void of power in the subdued humorous twinkle or genial by-play in which Stevenson excelled. But he has more of dramatic power, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Theodosius, but the real credit is due to a wealthy patrician, Florentius by name, who strongly censured this practice, to the Emperor, and offered his own property to make good the deficit which would appear upon its abrogation (Gibbon, vol. 2, p. 318, note). With the regulations and arrangements of the brothels, however, we have information which is far more accurate. These houses (lupanaria, fornices, et cet.) were situated, for ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... rarely indeed have I contented myself in verifying my quotations with comparing them merely with my own manuscript. In almost all instances I have once more examined the originals. 'Diligence and accuracy,' writes Gibbon, 'are the only merits which an historical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit indeed can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty[4].' By diligence and accuracy I have striven to win for myself a place in Johnson's school—'a school distinguished,' as Sir ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. 3. He drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent of Calvary; his crucifixion and death. 4. Gibbon writes, "I have been sorely afflicted with gout in the ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... succeeds the race of giants. This tree has great stay-at-home virtues. Let the sombre, aspiring, mysterious pine go; the birch has humble every-day uses. In Maine, the paper or canoe birch is turned to more account than any other tree. I read in Gibbon that the natives of ancient Assyria used to celebrate in verse or prose the three hundred and sixty uses to which the various parts and products of the palm-tree were applied. The Maine birch is turned to so many accounts that it may well be called the palm of this ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... to be remembered also that nuts form a substantial part of the diet of that large and interesting family of vertebrates, the primates, represented by the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan and the gibbon, animals that do not eat meat, and that man is also a primate. No authority has ever offered any reason why man's diet should differ from that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... half-sister; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Lady Temple, whose poems were printed by Horace Walpole; Perdita, whose lines on the snowdrop are very pathetic; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that 'she was made for something better than a Duchess'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs. Chapone, and Amelia Opie, all deserve a place on historical, if not on artistic, grounds. In fact, the space given by Mrs. Sharp to modern and living poetesses is somewhat disproportionate, and I am ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... spoil on all, was early pronounced. And here, again, we see at once how it will be evaded: it is the desert, it is the climate, it is the solemnity of that unchanging basis, which will secure the unchanging life of its children. But it is remarkable enough that Gibbon and other infidels, kicking violently against this standing miracle (because, if not so in itself, yet, according to Bishop Butler's just explanation concerning miraculous per de-rivationem as recording a miraculous power of vision), have by oscillation clung to the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... James Smith do. Calton Matthew Rea do. Robert Young in Postle Jas. Morton shoemaker Calton John Morison do. there Wm. Somerville miller Glasgow Wm. Henderson weaver there John Falconer there William Allan there John Gray Westmuir James Ralston Glasgow Wm. M'Gibbon there Agnes Dalrymple there James Glen farmer Woodside James Dickson Auldhousebridge James Findlay weaver Gorbals Peter Gray coalhewer Shettleston James Graham Glasgow Wm. Loudon gardener Dalbeth Agnes ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... immortal works. There were others who were in the heat of the literary battle. This period saw the beginning of the modern novel in the writings of Richardson, Fielding and Smollett, then too was published Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Hume's "History of England," and Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The two great literary frauds in our language were then given to the world in Chatterton's "Poems," and Macpherson's "Ossian." It was the age of Pitt and Burke, and ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... looked at Bell, but God forgive me, it was not with the old trustfulness. He was on the top shelf but one, just in line with the eyes, with gilt front winking in the firelight. I had set him thus conspicuous with intention, because of his calfskin binding, quite old and worn. A decayed Gibbon, I had thought, proclaims a grandfather. A set of British Essayists, if disordered, takes you back of the black walnut. To what length, then, of cultured ancestry must not this Bell give evidence? (I had bought Bell, secondhand, on Farringdon ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... road in the United States (think what that means!), it has been judged expedient that the children and myself should remain behind. I am about, therefore, to return with them to the Farm, where I shall pass the remainder of the winter,—how, think you? Why, reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," which I have never read yet, and which I now intend to study with classical atlas, Bayle's dictionary, the Encyclopaedia, and all sorts of "aids to beginners." How quiet I shall be! I think perhaps I may die some day, without so much as being aware of it; and if so, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... general notion of the men, and of their time, will find all that they require (set forth from different points of view, though with the same honesty and learning) in Gibbon; in M. de Montalembert's "Moines d'Occident," in Dean Milman's "History of Christianity" and "Latin Christianity," and in Ozanam's "Etudes Germaniques." {17a} But the truest notion of the men is to be got, after all, from the original documents; and especially ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... outrages and Sitting Bull's threatening attitude, it was decided to send out three separate expeditions, one of which should move from the north, under General Terry, from Fort Lincoln; another from the east, under General Gibbon, from Fort Ellis, and another from the south, under General Crook, from Fort Fetterman; these movements were to be simultaneous, and a junction was expected to be formed near the headwaters ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... more elegant and artificial language of Samuel Johnson, who set the standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume his History of England, and Adam Smith the ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... nor to the hard necessity of money-making, as a suitable spot for the conception of a history of the origin, rise, decline and fall of the great maritime Republic, whose dominions, still smiling and populous, surround Ravello on all sides? Gibbon found the first suggestion for his Roman History whilst musing upon the ruins of the Capitol, and he finished his great work in a Swiss garden amidst the scent of acacia bloom; might not the annals of the Amalfitan Republic likewise spring from reflections made upon this ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Being once acquainted with the changes that have taken place, we may more accurately compare them with the state of this country at the present time. Those who will take the trouble to read Ferguson's History of the Roman Republic, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Empire, may form a judgement of the accuracy ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... eloquence, and essential poetry! We should meet there with admirable specimens of translation from Jean Paul Richter and Lessing; with a criticism on the former, quite equal to that more famous one of Carlyle's; with historical chapters, such as those in "Blackwood" on the Caesars, worthy of Gibbon; with searching criticisms, such as one on the knocking in Macbeth, and two series on Landor and Schlosser; with the elephantine humor of his lectures on "Murder, considered as one of the fine arts;" and with the deep theological insight of his papers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... stated by and for the government immediately roused the old opposition, that "ardent and powerful opposition," as Gibbon, who sat in the Commons, describes it; and again the House echoed to attack and invective. Burke, Fox, Conway, Barre, Dunning, and others, who on former occasions had cheered America with their stout defence of her rights, were present at this session ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... love of books he was very catholic. "Shaftesbury is not too genteel, nor Jonathan Wild too low. But for books which are no books," such as "scientific treatises, and the histories of Hume, Smollett, and Gibbon," &c., he confesses that he becomes splenetic when he sees them perched up on shelves, "like false saints, who have usurped the true shrines" of the legitimate occupants. He loved old books and authors, indeed, beyond most other things. He used to say (with ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... in England is thus described by Gibbon, the historian, who was then sitting in Parliament: "Dreadful news indeed! An English army of nearly ten thousand men laid down their arms, and surrendered, prisoners of war, on condition of being sent to England, and ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... into the springs of action in his portraits as Saint-Simon does. He was too studied a believer in the puppetry of men and women to make them more than ridiculous. And unquestionably the vain race of authors lent itself admirably to his love of caricature. His account of the vanity of Gibbon, whose history he admired this side enthusiasm, shows how he delighted in playing with an egoistic author ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... only for his complete fearlessness in following well-worn convention and his apparent reliance on his readers' ignorance or want of memory, Mr. J. MURRAY GIBBON'S Drums Afar (LANE) would be rather a remarkable book in these psycho-analytical days. His hero actually has the audacity to have blue eyes and fair hair, to start his career in the House, and to end it, so far as the novel is concerned, lying wounded in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... national power reached its zenith under Simeon (893-927), a monarch distinguished in the arts of war and peace. In his reign, says Gibbon, "Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth." His dominions extended from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and from the borders of Thessaly to the Save and the Carpathians. Having become the most powerful monarch in eastern Europe, Simeon assumed the style of "Emperor ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the work was likely to equal that of Gibbon both in length and the years necessary to its completion; also that from it could be expected no immediate pecuniary profits, Mr. Knight looked round to find some other way of occupying his leisure, and adding to his income. Although a reserved person, on a certain ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... soon opened to me, more suitable to my views, as being less connected with the Government. My first attempts at writing, particularly my Critical Notes on Gibbon's 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' and the 'Annals of Education,' a periodical miscellany in which I had touched upon some leading questions of public and private instruction, obtained for me the notice ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said Hoppart. "In the last few weeks, I've been reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers. I've read most of Athanasius, most of Eusebius, and—I'll confess it—Gibbon. I find all my old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to—to the amount of creed we are pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... began a hundred years ago in the University of Berlin. Preparatory work of the highest importance had been accomplished by laborious collectors like Baronius and Muratori, keen-sighted critics such as Mabillon and Wolf, and brilliant narrators like Gibbon and Voltaire. But it was not till Niebuhr, Boeckh, and above all Ranke preached and practised the critical use of authorities and documentary material that historical scholarship entered on the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... South Australia has, to my thinking, been peculiarly favoured. Conceived by political economy and born of religious nonconformity, it has ever been the most sober and respectable province of Australia. Thanks to Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's principles, on which the colony was founded, but little of the land fund has been squandered to fill the coffers of influential squatters, and by a system of credit to small freeholders in districts proclaimed suitable for agriculture—i.e., free selection after ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... met this same man against a stile. He bade me good- evening, and then proceeded to thank me for my speech, saying many complimentary things about it. I asked who it was to whom I had the honour of talking, and he told me he was Edward Gibbon Mardon. "It was Edward Gibson Mardon once, sir," he said, smilingly. "Gibson was the name of a rich old aunt who was expected to do something for me, but I disliked her, and never went near her. I did not see ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted almost entirely of handsome "uniform editions": Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of "famous classics," of "Oriental masterpieces," of "masterpieces ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... time of the Crusades, Richard Cour de Lion, the hero-king of England, became so renowned among the Saracens that (Gibbon informs us) his name was used by mothers and nurses to quiet their infants, and other historical characters before and after him served to like purpose. To the children of Rome in her later days, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... hurled his division, supported by Doubleday and Gibbon, against Jackson's weakest point, the right of the Confederate lines. Their aim was to seize an opposing hill. The curving lines of grey were silent until the charging hosts were well advanced in deadly range and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... made many enemies by his liberal and reforming measures, and he had alienated most of his colleagues by his reserved demeanour and seeming want of confidence in them. In December several of the ministers resigned. The strength of parties in the House of Commons was thus quaintly reckoned by Gibbon: "Minister 140; Reynard 90; Boreas 120; the rest unknown or uncertain." But "Reynard" and "Boreas" were now about to join forces in one of the strangest coalitions ever known in the history of politics. No statesman ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... person. You do not approach the classics with gusto—anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured to yourself, when reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall in bed: "Well, I really must read one more chapter before I go to sleep!" Speaking generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure commensurate with their renown. You peruse them with a sense of duty, a ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... when our purses have a plethora; but now, my dear fellow, depend upon it, the game is up. We have no scholars now, no literary recluses, no men who ever appear to think. 'Scribble, scribble, scribble' as the Duke of Cumberland said to Gibbon, should be the motto of the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Ammianus does not say that they were worshipped as martyrs. Onorum memoriam apud Mediolanum colentes nunc usque Christiani loculos ubi sepulti sunt, ad innocentes appellant. Wagner's note in loco. Yet if the next paragraph refers to that transaction, which is not quite clear. Gibbon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Areopagitica that he may breathe the air of high latitudes; but he has a corner in his heart for that evil living and mendacious bravo, but most perfect artist, Benvenuto Cellini. While he counts Gibbon's Rome, I mean the Smith and Milman edition in 8 vols., blue cloth, the very model of histories, yet he revels in those books which are the material for historians, the scattered stones out of which he builds ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... I do not understand what Gibbon means by saying (cap. xxxix. n. 95), 'The characters of the two delators, Basilius ('Var.' ii. 10, 11; iv. 22) and Opilio (v. 41; viii. 16), are illustrated, not much to their honour, in the Epistles of Cassiodorus.' This is quite true of Basilius, if the person alluded to in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... supported him on the right. A reconnoissance sent across the Appomattox reports the enemy moving on the Cumberland road to Appomattox Station, where they expect to get supplies. Custer is still pushing on. If General Gibbon and the Fifth Corps can get up to-night, we will perhaps finish the job in the morning. I do not think Lee means to surrender ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... Sebzar, near Samarkand, in Transoxiana (Turkestan). He is supposed to have been descended from a follower of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire; or, as some say, directly, by the mother's side, from Genghis himself. He is the Tamerlaine or Tamburlaine of Marlowe and other dramatists. Gibbon introduces him in the Decline and Fall, apparently because fascinated with the subject, although he gives as a historical reason the fact that Timur's triumph in Asia delayed the final fall of Constantinople—taken by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is the derivation of the name of the Seventh Region, which was bounded on one side by the sandy bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to the island of Saint Bartholomew, and which Gibbon designates as a 'quarter of the city inhabited only by mechanics and Jews.' The mechanics were chiefly tanners, who have always been unquiet and revolutionary folk, but at least one exception to the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... not so much distancing as leading the practical statesmen of his generation. And there is a curious fitness in the dedication to him in 1649 of Edward Pococke's Arabic studies, which nearly a century and a half later were to form the basis of Gibbon's great chapters. But the year of Mare Clausum is at once the greatest in Selden's life, and the last months of greatness in the life of his ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... of the grave diction of sober, moral writers, and the pompous, flowing style of modern historians. Fame began now to prick up his vanity to try an imitation of the great Dr. Robertson, Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Gibbon, those giants of literature. He thought if he could muster dollars enough to buy a style-mill, which those heroes of science undoubtedly used to cut out sentences for their works, he should succeed to a ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... certainly many difficulties in the matter" candidly replied my infidel friend. But, as if wishing to effect a diversion,—"Have you ever read Gibbon's ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Arab, conquest the authentic history commences; and the accounts given from the Moslem writers of this memorable event, which first gave the followers of the Prophet a footing in Europe, differ in no material point from the eloquent narrative of Gibbon. Al-Makkari, however, does not fail to inform us, that predictions had been rife from long past ages, which foretold the invasion and conquest of the country by a fierce people from Africa; and potent were the spells and talismans constructed to ward ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... was in one phase of the word a HARD and yet by no means a self-destructive drinker, for he had an iron constitution and could consume spirituous waters with the minimum of ill effect. He had what Gibbon was wont to call "the most amiable of our vices," a passion for women, and he cared no more for the cool, patient, almost penitent methods by which his father had built up the immense reaper business, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... did Anthony try to open his mind to the romance of finance; he could think of Mr. Ellinger only as one of the buyers of the handsome leather sets of Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and Gibbon that lined the walls of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul." The representative minds of the eighteenth century were such as Voltaire, the master of persiflage, destroying superstition with his souriere hideux; Gibbon, "the lord of irony," "sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer"; and Hume, with his thorough-going philosophic skepticism, his dry Toryism, and cool contempt for "zeal" of any kind. The characteristic products of the era were satire, burlesque, and travesty: "Hudibras," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of the Marca d'Ancona, was murdered by his own son (whom, for the most unnatural act Dante calls his step-son), for the sake of the treasures which his rapacity had amassed. See Ariosto. Orl. Fur. c. iii. st 32. He died in 1293 according to Gibbon. Ant. of the House of Brunswick. Posth. Works, v. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... that Mr Sydney Herbert, Mrs Chisholm, and the rest of those honourable men and women who have taken so much pains to promote emigration, should not have seen the importance of obtaining colonial postage reform. Mr Gibbon Wakefield, in his England and America, published nearly twenty years ago, lays much stress upon the impulse which healthy emigration to our colonies would derive from any measure which should enable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... besides, were book-gluttons, books in breeches; they imbibed information copiously, and also retained it, but as a matter of chance. The enjoyment of their life was to read; whereas, to master thoroughly a considerable field of knowledge, can never be all enjoyment. Gibbon was a book devourer, but he had a plan; he was organizing a vast work of composition. Macaulay, also, showed himself capable of realizing a scheme of composition; both his History and his Speeches have ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain |
