Amiable weaknesses of human nature.

In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade.

[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.

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

Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness.

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor.

The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .