The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

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

Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion; and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.

[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.

The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.