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My English is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.

— Edward Gibbon Attributed

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote lists this as attributed to Edward Gibbon, but no primary source has been found.

Source: Reported in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988), p. 97
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

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The true interest of an absolute monarch generally coincides with that of his people.

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In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

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A people elated by pride, or soured by discontent, is seldom qualified to form a just estimate of their actual situation.

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In every age the Persians have been addicted to intemperance, and the wines of Shiraz have triumphed over the law of Mahomet.

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A weak prince will always be governed by his domestics.

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More quotes by Edward Gibbon

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

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In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Hussyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.

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The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Gibbon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.