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

The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.

[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.

The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation

During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.

On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

[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.