Edward Gibbon quote of the day:

Edward Gibbon is my favorite historian, even higher on my list than Arnold Toynbee. His Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was first published in 1776. Or at least the first volume of it was. It's some millions of words long. My version of it, complete with original spelling, is three volumes, each volume being some 1000 + pages. It weighs more than any book I know of except the new complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. If you have not already dipped into this vast stream of Enlightenment erudition, do yourself a favor and do so as soon as possible. You may not get the answer to the question of what caused the Roman Empire to decline and fall, but you will get a brilliant, charming, and sophisticated tour of all the written sources on the subject by a man who could read Greek and Latin as easily as English. And it is delivered in some of the best English prose ever put to paper. It is also enlivened by a great ironic wit. Little by little I intend to inflict this blog with some of his funnier quotes. Just keep in mind that like Gibbon I am an historian of the late Roman Empire, and what passes for humor among us may seem a little odd to normal people.

In Chapter XXXVII, note 57, Gibbon remarks:

"I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: 'My vow of poverty has given me an hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.' -- I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity."

At another point, in writing about St Jerom (as he spells it) Gibbon says:

"The stories of Paul, Hilarion and Malchus, by the same author, [Jerom] are
admirably told; and the only defect of these pleasing compositions is the want
of truth and common sense."