But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.

Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .

[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

The revenge of a guilty woman is implacable.

In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.