The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.

If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.

The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province [Britain] was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean.

[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.

Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.

The distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the emperors; who substituted in their room a severe subordination of rank and office, from the titled slaves who were seated on the steps of the throne, to the meanest instruments of arbitrary power.

The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history