"Gibbon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who were sitting around could hardly stifle laughter, produced a very ludicrous effect. Silence having ensued, he proceeded: 'We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.' Mr. Gibbon muttered, in a low tone of voice. 'I should not like to trust myself with you.' This piece of sarcastick pleasantry was a prudent resolution, if applied ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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 the poorer class of emigrants ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Theodosius stayed the avalanche of Rome's invaders, one long story of the defeat and humiliation of the citizens of the greatest power the world has ever known. It is a vast drama that the genius and patience of a Gibbon has alone been able to deal with, defying almost by its gigantic catastrophes and ever raging turbulence the pen of history to chronicle and arrange. When the curtain rises on a new order of things, the age of Paganism has passed away, and ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of the "History of Greece." Altho several histories of Greece have been written since Grote's, his work "still remains in some respects the greatest," says A. D. Lindsay, his latest editor. Grote, in a sense, stands to Greece as Gibbon to the Roman Empire. He depended mainly on the literary sources, archaeology in his day having done little to widen knowledge. His work is therefore defective in its earlier parts, but from the sixth century ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... old! old! Rheumatism in warm weather: that is ugly. Now I must go to my boy and see what he can make of his Gibbon. The poor fellow! I think he finds the decay of Rome worse than ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... dust. Ernle's writing lives like that of Francis Parkman or Gibbon. Anyone serious about vegetable gardening will want to know all they can about the development of ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... that to treat her as a princess was a positive need of her companion's mind; wherefore she couldn't help it if this lady had her transcendent view of the way the class in question were treated. Susan had read history, had read Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon; she had high-lights as to the special allowances made for the class, and, since she saw them, when young, as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironic and infinitely refined, one must take it for amusing if she inclined to an indulgence ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... said McNish, his tone indicating quiet satisfaction. At Gibbon's bench he paused. "Ye'll no pit onything past him, a doot," he said, with a ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... proposition, a passage of poetry, a page of history, are all admirable things in their way, and each may be part of a work destined to durable celebrity; but what should we say to a composition which should present us, page about, with a theorem of Euclid, a scene from Shakspeare, and a section from Gibbon? Unity of effect, identity of train of thought, similarity of ideas, are as necessary in a book of travels as in an epic poem, a tragedy, or a painting. There is no such thing as one set of rules for the fine arts, and another for works of thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • 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
... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... radicalism caused a sensation. Many genuine Garrisonian Abolitionists recoiled from a policy of disunion. Lydia Maria Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee of the National Society hastened to disavow for the society all responsibility for the disunion sentiment of the editor of the Liberator. His new departure seemed to them ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the neglect of this canon which makes barren so much work upon the past. Read Gibbon's attempt to account for "why" the Catholic Church arose in the Roman Empire, and mark his empty failure. [Footnote: It is true that Gibbon was ill equipped for his task because he lacked historical imagination. He ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... 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
... historian, not tied to time 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 ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the 18th century from that of the first, as well as in some degree from that of all previous centuries. Among the authors of this generation whose writings belonged to other departments of thought than pure literature may be mentioned, in passing, the great historian, Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published from 1776-88, and Edmund Burke, whose political speeches and pamphlets possess a true literary quality. The romantic poets had addressed the imagination rather than the heart. It was reserved for two men—a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a 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 he came ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... desolation Broods on from year to heavy year, nor lute Nor love's guitar is heard. By marshy bank Girt with tall yellow reeds and dwarf bamboos I dwell. Night long and day no stir, no sound, Only the lurking cuckoo's blood-stained note, The gibbon's mournful wail. Hill songs I have, And village pipes with their discordant twang. But now I listen to thy lute methinks The gods were parents to thy music. Sit And sing to us again, while I engrave Thy story on my tablets!" Gratefully (For long she had been standing) the lute ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... from its one object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is often laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to shut the door of the cell, recline the beard and chin on the breast, and contemplate the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Nothing that Johnson wrote is to be compared, for excellence in its own manner, with Tom Jones or the Vicar of Wakefield or the Citizen of the World. He produced nothing in writing approaching the magnitude of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or the profundity of Burke's philosophy of politics. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose main business was painting and not the pen, was almost as good an author as he; his Discourses have little to fear when they are set beside ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... on the fourth floor. Every floor of that hotel had its memories for me. In this room lived that brave reactionary officer who boasted that he had made a raid on the Bolsheviks and showed little Madame Kollontai's hat as a trophy. In this I used to listen to Perceval Gibbon when he was talking about how to write short stories and having influenza. There was the room where Miss Beatty used to give tea to tired revolutionaries and to still more tired enquirers into the nature ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... a person of ability; but we dare not say of him, what Wieland said of Schiller, that by his first historical attempt he 'has discovered a decided capability of rising to a level with Hume, Robertson and Gibbon.' He will rather rise to a ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... very fond of study, and read scores of books on all kinds of subjects. Emerson was my favorite, and I procured and read his complete works. Gibbon and Macaulay were eagerly read as revealing some of the religious life of the world. Ingersoll, with many others, got his turn. But the book that produced the greatest effect on my life at this time was Fleetwood's ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... Gibbon has somewhere said, that one of the liveliest pleasures which the pride of man can enjoy is to reappear in a more splendid condition among those who have known him in ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... quiet everyday sort of a life; a little of Gibbon's History in the morning, and a good deal of "Van John" in the evening; this, with an occasional ride with Simcox and constitutional with Whitley, makes up the regular routine of my days. I see a good deal both of Herbert and Whitley, and the more ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... likewise, affirms that the cry of the Siamang may be heard for miles—making the woods ring again. So Mr. Martin describes the cry of the agile Gibbon as "overpowering and deafening" in a room, and "from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." Mr. Waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zooelogist, says, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... their claims, the rows and squabbles amongst the candidates, and the subsequent decision of posterity! Dr. Beattie would have ranked as first poet, and twenty years after the sublime Mr. Hayley would, no doubt, have claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have been eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions; and her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have interfered with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. Catharine Macaulay. How Goldsmith ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... professional men. David had never witnessed a more tempting opportunity. But how hollow and empty the whole result! What foolish sentimental emphasis, what unreality, what contempt for knowledge, yet what a show of it!—an elegant worthless jumble of Gibbon, Horace, St. Augustine, Wesley, Newman and Mill, mixed with the cheap picturesque—with moonlight on the Campagna, and sunset on Niagara—and leading, by the loosest rhetoric, to the most confident conclusions. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enmity, could not but concede his extraordinary powers. Lady Mary Wortley Montague reluctantly confessed that 'cousin Fielding' was the greatest original genius of the age; the fastidious Gray was charmed with him; and the more fastidious Gibbon has left his opinion on record, that the illustrious house of Hapsburg, from which Fielding was descended—its name erased, its towers crumbled,—will be forgotten, when the romance of Tom Jones shall flourish ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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 Crystal Palace ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Liberty the opportunity of singing in unison. He confesses that this Masque was "to close a drama I had projected on the adventures of Smith in Virginia, in the olden time." Then followed a tragedy suggested by Gibbon, entitled "Attila," but Mr. Barker had advanced only two acts when news came to him that John Augustus Stone was at work on a ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggle of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful when he told Mr. Northcote ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, [Footnote: Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.] and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Barlow, or indeed, Gibbon's entire command, move up at the time when the Sixth Michigan cavalry was contending alone with a superior force directly in ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... carelessness with which he executed works requiring accuracy and research. On the 22d of June he had received payment in advance for a Grecian History in two volumes, though only one was finished. As he was pushing on doggedly at the second volume, Gibbon, the historian, called in. "You are the man of all others I wish to see," cried the poet, glad to be saved the trouble of reference to his books. "What was the name of that Indian king who gave Alexander ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... 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
... amphitheatre of ancient Rome must have stimulated the capture of wild animals in Asia, Africa, and the then wild parts of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. I will quote one instance from Gibbon:— ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... and went on nervously: "The parson's not so bad. His English never offends me, and he has read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, all five volumes, and that's something. Then, he has been to New York, and that's a great deal. But how we are losing time! Do tell me about New York; Charley says you're just on from there. How does it look and taste and smell just now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... is it not? He says himself, "that Brahmanism may possibly melt away of a heap and break up, Iwould not absolutely deny." Would Mr. Lyall say the same of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity? He points himself to the description which Gibbon gives of the ancient Roman religion in the second century of the Christian era, and shows how closely applicable it is to the present state of Brahmanism in India. "The tolerant superstition of the people, 'not confined by the claims of any speculative system,' the 'devout polytheist, whom fear, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of Deists, and by French ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... numerous host 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 the stamp of method, even to the pitch of being valuable as models. Hamilton and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... gives Eusebius fully and fairly, but when he sums up, considers his author as admitting the Apocalypse into the second list. A stick may easily be found to beat the father of ecclesiastical history. There are whole faggots in writers as opposite as Baronius and Gibbon, who are perhaps his two most celebrated sons. But we can hardly imagine him totally misrepresenting the state of opinion of those for whom and among whom he wrote. The usual plan, that of making an author take the views of his readers, is more easy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... help account for the hyper-heroic style which is Corneille's great fault. A lady criticised his tragedy, "The Death of Pompey," by saying: "Very fine, but too many heroes in it." Corneille's tragedies generally have, if not too many heroes, at least too much hero, in them. Concerning the historian Gibbon's habitual pomp of expression, it was once wittily said that nobody could possibly tell the truth in such a style as that. It would be equally near the mark if we should say of Corneille's chosen mould of verse, that nobody could possibly be simple and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... supersaturated Dickensite, I pounced on your book and read it, as Wegg read Gibbon and other authors, right ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... o'clock, and are lodged for a few days at the Hotel de Courlande. I forgot to tell you that we saw an officer with furred waistcoat, and furred pockets, and monstrous moustache; he looked altogether very like the Little Gibbon in Shaw's Zoology, only the Little Gibbon does not look as ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... mind and body,—when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at discovering the source of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History. The feeling which he had dwelt on so long, that he had actually converted it into a duty, was after all mere curiosity; but what passion is more insatiable, or more capable of giving a kind of romantic grandeur to all its wanderings ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke—why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... (GYMNURA); several species of monkeys, and two of the anthropoid apes. The last are of peculiar significance, since they are incapable of crossing even narrow channels of water, and must be regarded as products of a very late stage of biological evolution. Of these two anthropoid species, the gibbon (HYLOBATES MULLERI) is closely allied to species found in the mainland and in Sumatra, while the MAIAS or orang-utan (SIMIA SALYRUS) is found also in Sumatra and, though not now surviving on the continent, must be regarded as related to anthropoids ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... indication of modesty, to find that the rude and tin-lettered inhabitants of an island in the South-Sea, are not a whit behind their venerated sages in the manufacture of gods and godlings. Alas, poor Gibbon! must the popular religion of Otaheite, the licentious, the dissolute, the child-murdering, the unnatural Otaheite, be put on a level with the elegant mythology of Homer, and the mild, serviceable superstition of imperial Rome? Why not? Is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... an indication of rank. In the later years of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says, "the meanest subjects of the Roman Empire [5th century] assumed the illustrious name of Patricius."—Decline and Fall, vol. viii. p. 300. Hence the confusion that arose amongst Celtic hagiographers, and the interchanging of the acts ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... those days persons of culture, in England as well as in Italy, were perhaps more interested in ancient history and in the history of the later Roman Empire than they are now; it is significant that Gibbon's Decline and Fall made its appearance just when the fashion for operas on subjects which might have been taken from its pages ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... among great historians, Mr. Bancroft resembles Gibbon. As an artist he has accomplished that most difficult task of composing a history made up of many separate threads, which must keep on side by side, yet all be subordinate to one main and predominant stream. But his narrative never loses its constant and fascinating interest. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... 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 path which it has pursued with ever-increasing ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the sentence.—Gibbon's "Decline and Fall", etc., volume 2, page 210. See also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... naturally makes on reading the life of Tacitus, is that he was admirably fitted by his distinguished military and political career for the duties of a historian. Gibbon said that his year in the yeomanry had been of more service to him in describing battles than any closet study could have been; and Tacitus has this great advantage over Livy that he had helped to make history as well as to relate it. His elevation to the rank of senator enabled him ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... squalid days of his life among the meadows and woods at Ermenonville. Robespierre, who could not have been more than twenty at the time, for Rousseau died in the summer of 1778, is said to have gone on a reverential pilgrimage in search of an oracle from the lonely sage, as Boswell and as Gibbon and a hundred others had gone before him. Rousseau was wont to use his real adorers as ill as he used his imaginary enemies. Robespierre may well have shared the discouragement of the enthusiastic father who informed Rousseau that he was about ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... to slavery and the slave-trade, and his open sympathy with the American Revolution. His correspondence was large, including such names as those of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Monboddo, Gibbon, Warren Hastings, Dr. Price, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Parr. Such a man ought to be remembered, especially by all who take an interest in the studies to which he has opened the way, for he was one who had a right to speak of himself, as he ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... this memoir; and indeed such comment is, now, a thrice-told tale. To Sir Walter Scott, Fielding is the "father of the English novel"; to Byron, "the prose Homer of human nature." The magnificent tribute of Gibbon still remains a towering monument, whatever experts may tell us concerning the Hapsburg genealogy. "Our immortal Fielding," he wrote, "was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburg. The ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... 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 ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... the Confederate States Army, have supplied me with new matter. Colonel Miller, U.S.A., most courteously responded to my request for a copy of the services of his regiment, the First Artillery, in the Mexican war. The late General John Gibbon, U.S.A., wrote for me his reminiscences of Jackson as a cadet at West Point, and as a subaltern in Mexico; and many officers who fought for the Union have given me information as to the tactics and discipline of the Federal armies. The Reverend J. Graham, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... enemy under R. H. Anderson took advantage of this and pushed through our line, planting their flags on a part of the intrenchments not on fire. But owing to the efforts of Hancock, their success was but temporary. Carroll, of Gibbon's division, moved at a double quick with his brigade and drove back the enemy, inflicting great loss. Fighting had continued from five in the morning sometimes along the whole line, at other times only in places. The ground fought over ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty, the people would be obedient to the laws, the chiefs just, the magistrates incorrupt, the soldiers would despise death, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state." Gibbon admits, that the gospel, or the church, discouraged suicide, advanced erudition, checked oppression, promoted the manumission of slaves, and softened the ferocity of barbarous nations; that fierce nations received ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Royal more especially, and of the other works in general, Balzac informs us that Sainte-Beuve's great characteristic as a writer is l'ennui, l'ennui boueux jusqu'a mi-jambe, that his style is intolerable, that his historical handling is like that of Gibbon, Hume, and other dull people; when he jeers at him for exhuming "La mere Angelique," and scolds him for presuming to obscure the glory of the Roi Soleil, the thing is partly ludicrous, partly melancholy. One remembers that agreeable ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... speakers were manly and dignified figures. The fire and force of their rhetoric were not only aided by graceful gesture but were set out in a language worthy of the eloquent. If we cannot say of the Maori tongue as Gibbon said of Greek, that it "can give a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy," we can at any rate claim for it that it is a musical and vigorous speech. Full of vowel-sounds, entirely without sibilants, but rich in guttural and chest notes, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... done in a single word, it animates the prose; so it is more agreeable to read in Mr. Gibbon's History, "Germany was at this time over-shadowed with extensive forests;" than Germany was at this time full of extensive forests. But where this mode of expression occurs too frequently, the prose approaches to poetry: and in graver works, where we expect to be instructed ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... other masters of history, who related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of the monks at prayer, he felt the genius loci stir him with a mixture of astonishment and pathos. Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence, the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... But there is nothing very great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend, not give for a book that belonged to the author of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... at Lausanne, in the Hotel Gibbon, occupying the very parlor that the Ruskins had when we were here before. The day I left you I progressed prosperously to Paris. Reached there about one o'clock at night; could get no carriage, and finally had to turn in at a little hotel close by the station, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... made pretty, I shall, as you said, be his guide, philosopher and friend, and he shall become a success—as great a success as your friend. I always wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck come to you with the Civil List and, dropping on one knee—no, two knees, a' la Gibbon—hand it to you and say, 'Adorable angel, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... not improbable that the great Akaimenian race, as worshipping and upholding sun and moon faiths, were called after Meni, the moon." [151] Among the Arabians the moon was the great divinity, as may be learned from Pocock's Specimen Historiae Arabum; Prideaux's Connection; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and Sale's Preliminary Discourse to his translation of the Koran. Tiele says: "The ancient religion of the Arabs rises little higher than animistic polydaemonism. The names Itah and Shamsh, the sun god, occur among all the Semitic peoples; Allat, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... 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 Fox, of Horace Walpole and Chesterfield in English politics, Benjamin Franklin ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though, that she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined to read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing her that afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning the first volume of Gibbon's "Rome" with an air of determined concentration, and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which was among the plants sacred to Aphrodite, was also appealing to this master poet, who was born this month, as were Wordsworth, George Herbert, John Keble, Anthony Trollope, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon, and who died this month as did Edward Young, who wrote Night Thoughts, and Abraham Lincoln, who freed a race and saved a nation. Who can ever forget the month of Lincoln's death after he has once read that exquisite description of an April day and the song of ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... taken from the Sclavonic tribes. Hence, in all the languages of Western Europe, the once glorious name of Slave has come to express the most degraded condition of men. What centuries of violence and warfare does the history of this word disclose.' [Footnote: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 55. [It is very doubtful whether the idea of 'glory' was implied originally in the national name of Slav. It is generally held now that the Slavs gave themselves the name as being 'the intelligible,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... 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; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was long. In Bourke's battalion the specially distinguished were Captains Wauchop, Plunkett, Donnellan, MacAuliffe, Carrin, Power, Nugent, and Ivers; in Dillon's, Major O'Mahony, Captains Dillon, Lynch, MacDonough, and Magee, and Lieutenants Dillon and Gibbon, John Bourke and Thomas Dillon. Major O'Mahony was sent to Paris to carry the news of the victory to the king, who presented him with a purse of 1,000 louis d'or, a pension of 1,000 livres, and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... stores of a laborious life,—all combined to rebuke my own 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, with its single stamp. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 8, 1660, they acted also in Gibbon's Tennis Court in Clare Market, which they had fitted up as a theatre; see Halliwell-Phillipps, A Collection ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... can say, I will believe this, that, or the other? and least of all, that which he least can comprehend. I have, however, observed, that those who have begun life with extreme faith, have in the end greatly narrowed it, as Chillingworth, Clarke (who ended as an Arian), Bayle, and Gibbon (once a Catholic), and some others; while, on the other hand, nothing is more common than for the early sceptic to end in a firm belief, like Maupertuis, and Henry ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... military monarchy and 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 and above all in Caesar's own soul(5) the hopeful dream of a combination ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... no 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 ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... warmly sympathetic, Islam (1914); D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1905), in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, The Early Development of Mohammedanism (1914); Arthur Gilman, Story of the Saracens (1902), in the "Story of the Nations" Series. Edward Gibbon has two famous chapters (1, li) on Mohammed and the Arabian conquests in his masterpiece, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Koran, the sacred book of Mohammedans, has been translated into English by E. H. Palmer, 2 vols. (1880): entertaining extracts are given in Stanley Lane-Poole, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... orang-foetus must be corrected. A large ear with a point is shown in the photograph,[91] but it can easily be demonstrated—and Deniker has already pointed this out—that the figure is not that of an orang foetus at all, for that form has much smaller ears with no point; nor can it be a gibbon-foetus, as Deniker supposes, for the gibbon ear is also without a point. I myself regard it as that of a Macacus-embryo. But this mistake, which is due to Nitsche, in no way affects the fact recognised by Darwin, that ear-forms showing ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... he could not say, with Macaulay, that Gieseler was a rascal, of whom he had never heard, he missed no opportunity of showing his dislike for that accomplished artificer in mosaic. Looking at the literature before him, at England, with Gibbon for its one ecclesiastical historian; at Germany, with the most profound of its divines expecting the Church to merge in the State, he inferred that its historic and organic unity would only be recognised by Catholic science, while the soundest Protestant would understand it least. In later ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of Zosimus is not of so high a character as justly to weigh against a strong internal improbability, or the silence of other historians. Gibbon says of him, 'In good policy we must use the service of Zosimus without esteeming him or trusting him,' and repeatedly designates him as 'credulous,' 'partial,' 'disingenuous.' By Tillemont he is ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... in the midst of the Western Andes and upon the slopes of these mountain monarchs which look toward the Atlantic. In this century one can almost count upon his hand the travelers who have written of their journeys in this unknown region. Our own Herndon and Gibbon descended—the one the Peruvian and the other the Bolivian waters—the affluents of the Amazon, beginning their voyage where the streams were mere channels for canoes, and finishing it where the great river appears a fresh-water ocean. Mr. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord Rockingham's. Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage. Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into Parliament. John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and fifty-eight members ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... case," 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
... worked only from printed documents, selecting the Memorial of St. Helena of Las Casas in preference not only to a hundred- and-one similar compilations concerning Napoleon's exile, but in preference to Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon. ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... inconveniences, and that the citizen should have his periods of communion with unsophisticated nature. Squire and Wit are each learning to appreciate each other's tastes. The tourist is developed, and begins, as Gibbon tells us, to 'view the glaciers' now that he can view them without personal inconvenience. This, again, suggests that there is nothing radically new in the so-called love of nature. Any number of poets from Chaucer downwards may be cited to show that men were ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... 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
... State. It is not a virtue of the dynasty, and the Hohenzollerns certainly deserve no credit for it. The Prussian doctrine of toleration has always been of a negative and conditional kind. Prussian Kings have adopted the religious theory of Gibbon. All religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally true to the unbeliever. They are equally ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... gave a charm to his record of her political vicissitudes; while he made capital of touching "situations," he displayed his own strength of intellect; but, with all this, did not write complete and authentic history. And when analyzed, what was the animus of Gibbon's elaborate chronicle? He "spent his time, his life, his energy," says a severe, but just critic, "in putting a polished gloss on human tumult, a sneering gloss on human piety." And who has not felt, in following Macaulay's animated periods and thorough exposition and illustration ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... literature, a new light is thrown upon its beauties, fresh life bursts forth from every chapter, and we seem to have a nearer and more personal interest in its success. What a powerful sensation, for instance, is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought of writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of Ara Coeli, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva, and laid his pen down and walked forth ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of ours, and we speculate upon them in the present year of grace, as our grandchildren, a hundred years hence, will give their judgment about us. As for your book-learning, O respectable ancestors (though, to be sure, you have the mighty Gibbon with you), I think you will own that you are beaten, and could point to a couple of professors at Cambridge and Glasgow who know more Greek than was to be had in your time in all the universities of Europe, including that of Athens, if such an one existed. As for science, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Johnson; the Novelists: Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. The Drama; Non-dramatic Poetry: Young, Blair, Akenside, Thomson, Gray, and Collins. The Third Generation (1760-1800); the Historians: Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Miscellaneous Prose: Johnson, Goldsmith, "Junius," Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Burke, Criticism: Burke, Reynolds, Campbell, Kames. Political Economy: Adam Smith. Ethics: Paley, Smith, Tucker. Metaphysics: Reid. Theological and Religious Writers: ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... affecting tribute, written, as it evidently seems, under such solemn impressions, clears the memory of Laura from the imputation of any thing trifling or criminal, while it sufficiently establishes the identity of "a nymph," according to Gibbon, "so shadowy, that her existence ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... 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 of their respective ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... sun could scarcely pierce. At that hour the mist lifted and rolled away, and the Confederates posted on the ridge saw a heavy column of infantry advancing to attack their right, near the Hamilton House. This force was Meade's division, supported by Gibbon's, with a third in reserve, General Franklin having put in action as many troops as his orders ("a division at least") permitted. General Meade was arrested for some time by a minute but most annoying obstacle. Stuart had placed a single piece of artillery, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fourteen years, was so impressed by the utter indifference of Oxford authorities to their duties, as to find in it an admirable illustration of the consequences of the neglect of the true principles of supply and demand implied in the endowment of learning. Gibbon, his junior by twenty-eight years, passed at Oxford the "most idle and unprofitable" months of his whole life; and was, he said, as willing to disclaim the university for a mother, as she could be to renounce him for a son. Oxford, as judged by these men, was remarkable as an illustration ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Charlemagne, and from Rome to Paris. He quoted from Buckle and Bacon and Macaulay till I marveled at the contrast between his great shaggy head and its commonplace surroundings, for in the midst of a discussion of the bleak problems of Agnosticism, or while considering Gibbon's contribution to the world's stock of historical knowledge, certain weather-worn Bavarian farmers came and went, studying us with half-stupid, half-suspicious glances, having no more kinship with Don Carlos ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... was taken. Quickly collecting the troops of Palmyra and the Arabs and Armenian who were his allies, the fearless "head-man" fell upon the army of the haughty Persian king, defeated and despoiled it, and drove it back to Persia. As Gibbon, the historian says: "The majesty of Rome, oppressed by a Persian, was protected by an Arab ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... him with General John Gibbon and two aides a few yards from the door, and making his brief report learned as he moved away that there was some trouble on the left wing. Meade coming out with Hancock, they mounted and rode away in haste, too late to correct General Sickles' ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... monkey, a young male, in the creek bed and sat down to examine it. It was evidently a gibbon (Hylobates), for its long arms, round head, and tailless body were unmistakable, but in every species with which I was familiar the male was black. This one was yellow and we knew it to be a prize. That there were two other species in the herd was certain for we had seen both brown ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... set up such a distinction between "bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle? "Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by Shakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" is an "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a "tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use of English." Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora flung away and was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors he flings." Charles Reade "is guilty ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... books is also fine, and it is peculiar. It is not the worse for a little idiosyncrasy. He does not go deep into the Scotch novels, but he is at home in Smollett or Fielding. He is little read in Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial, or Fuller's Worthies, or John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more unimpressible to a specious declamation: ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... district of Kent,' 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... l. 3171. E. quotes Gibbon's accounts of the burial of Attila when the "chosen squadrons of the Hun, wheeling round in measured evolutions, chanted a funeral song to ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... for instance, with absolutely truthful intention, amid the multitude of facts presented to him must needs select, and in selecting assert something of his own humour, something that comes not of the world without but of a vision within. So Gibbon moulds his unwieldy material to a preconceived view. Livy, Tacitus, Michelet, moving full of poignant sensibility amid the records of the past, each, after his own sense, modifies—who can tell where and to what degree?—and becomes something else than a transcriber; each, as he thus modifies, passing ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... passion will be for books," said Frederick the Great, in his old age. He had hardly looked down into the waters until he got nearly to the other shore. Gibbon declared that a taste for books was the pleasure and glory of his life; and Carlyle, who, it is supposed, was better acquainted with books than any man who has yet lived, declared that of all man could do or make here below, by far the most momentous, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... into the habit of reading at nights, and the steady life made my brain clear. Books that had been dim memories to me for years became vivid, and the power of sustained thinking came back. In those long, calm evenings, I went through my Gibbon again, and the awful pageant that rolls past our view under the direction of the aristocrat of literature made my late life seem poor and mean. How low we were! The darkened costers are interesting as studies ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... centuries, of the erasures on various inscribed stones—erasures of some emperor's or Caesar's name after his death by the chisel of a soldier in one of his legions on this far-away post of his empire. It is one thing to read one's Gibbon, and learn of the murder of Geta, son of Severus, by order of his brother Caracalla, and another to see the youth's name roughly scratched out on a stone in Hexham Abbey crypt; and to read of the assassination ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... of a young child the box-shape exists, while its prominent abdomen resembles that of the gorilla. The gibbon exhibits this iliac expansion through the sitting posture which developed his ischial callosities. Similarly iliac expansion occurs in the chimpanzee. The megatherium had wide iliacal expansions due to its semi-erect habits; but as its weight was in great ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... peculiar to himself; it partakes more of the style of the writers of the last century than of the style of the present age. It possesses great merit, but sometimes is negligent and loose. Mr. Gibbon mentioned it to the editor in warm terms of commendation; and was astonished when he heard how much of our author's life had been spent abroad. Speaking of our author's Lives of the Saints, (vol. iv. 457,) he calls ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... were the Middle Ages—the centuries that separate the ancient from the modern world. They were something more than centuries of transition, though the genius of a Gibbon has represented them as a long night of ignorance and force, only redeemed from utter squalor by some lingering rays of ancient culture. It is true that they began with an involuntary secession from the power which represented, in the fifth century, the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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 the philosophers as equally false and by the magistrate as equally useful. ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner "to the company of Sterne or Fielding, Horace Walpole or Boswell." The love of reading which Gibbon declared he would not exchange for all the treasures of India was, in fact, with Macaulay "a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of the biographer ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... "History of the Romans Under the Empire." Merivale's purpose in writing this book was to fill in the interval between the unfinished history by Thomas Arnold and Gibbon.] ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... considered, certain familiar foreign names are conspicuously absent. Achmed Abdullah, Stacy Aumonier, F. Britten Austin, Phyllis Bottome, Thomas Burke, Coningsby Dawson, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Lord Dunsany, John Galsworthy, Perceval Gibbon, Blasco Ibanez, Maurice Level, A. Neil Lyons, Seumas MacManus, Leonard Merrick, Maria Moravsky, Alfred Noyes, May Sinclair and Hugh Walpole all illustrate recovery from the world war. But with their stories the Committee had nothing to do. The ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Duke succeeded in unhorsing his companion, and in the delay that followed his servants made their appearance and rescued him. For this outrage Blood was never punished. Sir Christopher Wren died in St. James's Street in 1723, and Gibbon, the historian, in 1794. The names of Waller, the poet, Wolfe, C. Fox, and Lord Byron, are among the residents. It was here that the last named was lodging when his "Childe Harold" created such an extraordinary sensation. Alexander Pope ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... magazines from America, and it exasperated him that Mackintosh showed his contempt for these ephemeral publications. He had no patience with the books that absorbed Mackintosh's leisure and thought it only a pose that he read Gibbon's Decline and Fall or Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. And since he had never learned to put any restraint on his tongue, he expressed his opinion of his assistant freely. Mackintosh began to see the real man, and under the boisterous good-humour he discerned ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... a moral rather than an intellectual revulsion. To his true followers, indeed, like Jonathan {167} Edwards, it seems "a delightful doctrine, exceeding bright, pleasant and sweet." [Sidenote: Eternal damnation] But many men agree with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrant and with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean. Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to do with his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... take it," he said. "I have my profession, Mr. Walpole, and it is an honourable one. And I would not exchange it, sir, were it in your power to make me a Gibbon or a Hume, or tutor to his Royal Highness, which it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all the lucky possessors of such a capacity for acquiring knowledge. Wide reading may be good from an educational point of view, but unless we are able to assimilate what we read better a thousand times to restrict our reading. Gibbon's advice is bad, for it indicates merely the system he employed in compiling his monumental work. 'We ought not,' he remarks, 'to attend to the order of our books so much as (to the order) of our thoughts.' So, in the midst of Homer ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... "Here they come! Here comes the infantry!" The blue ranks stirred a little as the men felt their cartridge boxes and the sockets of their bayonets. The calm warnings of the officers could be heard all down the line of Gibbon's magnificent division, which stood straight in Pickett's path. "Steady, men, steady! ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... 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 why I should be ticketed ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... most part the students wait their turn very patiently. To stand and wait while some one examines white discs is soothing. The umbrella will certainly be found. But the fact leads you on all day through Macaulay, Hobbes, Gibbon; through octavos, quartos, folios; sinks deeper and deeper through ivory pages and morocco bindings into this density of thought, this conglomeration ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lectures, published under the name of a person, one Rutherford, who had purchased the MS., were given to the world in "A View of Ancient History." But one highly-finished composition he had himself published; it is a philosophical review of Despotism: had the name of Gibbon been affixed to the title-page, its authenticity had ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department; so that few nations exist, or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon. Of the classics, I know about as much as most school-boys after a discipline of thirteen years; of the law of the land as much as enables me to keep "within the statute"—to use the poacher's vocabulary. I did study the "Spirit ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... which they regarded as the price of success. Addison amassed as much as three folios of manuscript materials before he began writing. Newton wrote his Chronology fifteen times over before he was satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his Memoir nine times. Hale studied for many years at the rate of sixteen hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law, he would recreate himself with philosophy and the study of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... "will soon be regarded as a kind of Phoenix." But in this special department of Everyman's Library we have been eclectic enough to choose our history men from every school in turn. We have Grote, Gibbon, Finlay, Macaulay, Motley, Frescott. We have among earlier books the Venerable Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, have completed a Livy in an admirable new translation by Canon Roberts, while Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides and Herodotus ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... being perpetually translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this manner is in Junius, because his antithesis is less merely verbal than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the worst of all; it has every fault of which this peculiar style is capable. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin; in coming from Cicero you ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... argumentative, combative, stirring, pathetic, practical, and pictorial. The text has about the same connection at first with the discourse that a campanile has with a cathedral. A solid eulogium upon the book from which it is taken gives occasion for some side-slashes at Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon; the deaths of these are contrasted with the obsequies of the righteous, and the old-fashioned, material place of punishment is reasserted and minutely described. The text is then said to naturally resolve itself into ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... I see it now, all vividly before me! The carpet—ay, its very hues and figures: The chandelier, the sofa, the engraving Of Wellington that hung above the mantel; The little bookcase, holding Scott and Irving, And Gibbon's Rome, and Eloisa's Letters; And, in a vase, upon the marble stand, An opening rose-bud I had plucked that day— Type of my ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... had written Academic 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 not jealous!' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the chief; "but I believe that you are telling the truth. Nor do I hesitate to tell you that we have asked these questions because we wish to learn all that we can. The soldiers of your people are advancing under the yellow-haired general, Custer, Terry, Gibbon, and others. They come in great force, but the Sioux, in greater force and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... windows, numbers 39 and 40, also removed in 1788, still offer, in their rose, the figure of a member of the Courtenay family. Gibbon was so much attracted by the romance of the Courtenays as to make an amusing digression on the subject which does not concern us or the cathedral except so far as it tells us that the Courtenays, like so many other benefactors of ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... changes and varieties of work, without ever losing sight of the purpose with which he began. He piqued himself on having early seen that a man ought to have an object to which to devote his whole life—"be it a dictionary like Johnson's or a history like Gibbon's"—and on having discerned and chosen his own object. And at an early time of his life in Rome he draws an outline of thought and inquiry, destined to break off into many different labours, in very much the same language in which he might have ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... (10) Gibbon regrets this chronology, i.e. from the creation of the world, which he thinks preferable to the vulgar mode from the Christian aera. But how vague and uncertain the scale which depends on a point so remote and undetermined as the precise time when the world was created. If we examine the chronometers ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... Historique et Archeologique du Pas de Calais," vol. i, p. 22). The circuit of the present fortifications, about 700 yards square, present to-day the appearance pf the old Roman encampment. "The camp of a Roman legion," writes Gibbon, "presented all the appearance of a fortified city. As soon as the place was marked out, the pioneers carefully levelled the ground and removed every impediment that might interrupt its perfect regularity. It forms an exact quadrangle, and we might calculate that a square of 700 yards was sufficient ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... literature of criticism. It seeks both to teach and to move. Our concern is chiefly with De Quincey's second field—the literature of power. In the first field, the literature of knowledge, must lie all history, with Hume and Gibbon; all science, with Darwin and Fiske; all philosophy, with Spencer and William James; all political writing, with Voltaire and Webster. Near that same field must lie many of those essays in criticism of which Professor Dowden speaks. This which we omit, this literature of knowledge, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... with, and keep up that bold and daring spirit of liberty, which made England what she is; and the loss of which is now perceived by their surrendered ships, and beaten armies in America. All these things will hereafter be detailed by some future Gibbon, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... sports of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,—certainly to the processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon, that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Foot-Regiments: Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert Barrow.—One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... and wreaked their vengeance on us for that reason. Thanks for the honor, but there is not the slightest connection! Where they did not carry off articles bearing our name, they cut it off, as in the visiting-cards, and left only the first name. Every book of any value or interest, except Hume and Gibbon, was "borrowed" permanently. I regretted Macaulay more than all the rest. Brother's splendid French histories went, too; all except "L'Histoire de la Bastille." However, as they spared father's law libraries (all except one volume ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... ses armoiries, on ne signe point autrement les traites qu'en traceant ces figures." Among the animal totems Charlevoix notices porcupine, bear, wolf and turtle. The armoiries, the totemistic heraldry of the peoples of Virginia, greatly interested a heraldic ancestor of Gibbon the historian,(2) who settled in the colony. According to Schoolcraft,(3) the totem or family badge, of a dead warrior is drawn in a reverse position on his grave-post. In the same way the leopards of England are drawn reversed on the shield of an English king opposite the mention of his ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoever tells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrative deals in the marvelous," such as Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Herodotus' History, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dealing as it does in such marvelous accounts as the death of half the inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history of wonderful occurrence—it is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Lancaster I applied myself closely to study and reading, mainly of history. I read Hume, Smollett and Miller's histories of England, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and such histories of the United States as I could procure. It was at this time that the memorable "Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign" of 1840 commenced. General Harrison had been nominated in December, 1839, at Harrisburg, by the Whig party. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... are unpolite—not because they mean to be so, but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better. Thus, when Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his 'Decline and Fall,' the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always AT IT in the old way—SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE!" The Duke probably intended to pay the author ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... was passed around and freely used by both men and women, now commands no respect except as an ancestral curio. Dryden, Dean Swift, Pope, Addison, Lord Chesterfield, Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Keats, Charles Lamb, Gibbon, Walter Scott and Darwin were among the prominent worshipers of the snuff-box and its contents, while some of them indulged in the habit to the degree of intemperance. In describing his manner of using the snuff-box Gibbon wrote: "I drew my snuff-box, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur |
