Famous quotes containing the words edward gibbon, edward, gibbon and/or years:
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
““And what will you leave to your own mother dear,
Edward, Edward?
And what will ye leave to your own mother dear,
My dear son, now tell me, O?”
“The curse of hell from me shall ye bear,
Mother, mother;”
—Unknown. Edward (l. 49–54)
“The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)