The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events

The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle -- their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.

If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.