Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, Esq |
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Page 27
... Christianity on the ground of a sort of high Tory affection for the old Establishment of Paganism , " and no reader of his letters can help observing how intimately the best feelings of his nature are bound up EDWARD GIBBON . 27.
... Christianity on the ground of a sort of high Tory affection for the old Establishment of Paganism , " and no reader of his letters can help observing how intimately the best feelings of his nature are bound up EDWARD GIBBON . 27.
Page 29
... affection he addresses as Dear Madam ) an account of his way of life at Lausanne , he says of himself and his friend : - " Perhaps two persons so perfectly fitted to live together were never formed by nature and education . We have both ...
... affection he addresses as Dear Madam ) an account of his way of life at Lausanne , he says of himself and his friend : - " Perhaps two persons so perfectly fitted to live together were never formed by nature and education . We have both ...
Page 35
... affection resulting from a neglected rupture ; it had now become a terrible burden as well as a grotesque deformity , and within a short time after his arrival in England he underwent three operations . They gave relief , but they tried ...
... affection resulting from a neglected rupture ; it had now become a terrible burden as well as a grotesque deformity , and within a short time after his arrival in England he underwent three operations . They gave relief , but they tried ...
Page 61
... affection * The union to which I owe my birth was a marriage of inclination and esteem . Mr. James Porten , a merchant of London , resided with his family at Putney , in a house adjoining to the bridge and churchyard , where I have ...
... affection * The union to which I owe my birth was a marriage of inclination and esteem . Mr. James Porten , a merchant of London , resided with his family at Putney , in a house adjoining to the bridge and churchyard , where I have ...
Page 67
... affectionate heart of my aunt , Catherine Porten , be- wailed a sister and a friend ; but my poor father was inconsolable , and the transport of grief seemed to threaten his life or his reason . I can never forget the scene of our first ...
... affectionate heart of my aunt , Catherine Porten , be- wailed a sister and a friend ; but my poor father was inconsolable , and the transport of grief seemed to threaten his life or his reason . I can never forget the scene of our first ...
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Popular passages
Page 174 - It was at .Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 33 - I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.
Page 11 - After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate : I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life.
Page 59 - Call," is still read as a popular and powerful book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel ; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life ; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame...
Page 19 - The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation...
Page 194 - I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette ; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion of the day ; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking of any profane critic.
Page 92 - To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry. Both knave and fool the merchant we may call, To pay great sums, and to compound the small: For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all?
Page 75 - Continuation of Echard's Roman History," which is indeed executed with more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my intellectual feast.
Page 48 - Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame, Will never mark the marble with his name : Go, search it there, where to be born and die, Of rich and poor makes all the history ; Enough, that Virtue fill'd the space between ; Prov'd by the ends of being, to have been.
Page 11 - A rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure ; and in the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe.