Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.
Interpretation
Hope offers comfort in difficult conditions and can lead to freedom through hard work and loyalty.
This quote by Edward Gibbon reflects on the concept of hope as a source of comfort for individuals in difficult situations, such as a Roman slave. It suggests that even in the harshest of circumstances, the possibility of achieving freedom through dedication and valuable contributions is a powerful motivator that keeps the spirit alive.
In practice
During a speech on resilience in tough times.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth 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.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
O life! An age to the miserable, a moment to the happy.
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.
I never aimed to be on television or in the press. We all have a personal life, and being a public figure disrupts that.
There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.
Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
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