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.
It all goes back and back," Tyrion thought, "to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.
And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.
Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.
For then only will you be strong, when you cherish the laws, and when the revolutionary attempts of lawless men shall have ceased.
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.
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