Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native country; but they are embarked in chains: and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa.

Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.

If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.

Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.

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

'I believe in o­ne God and Mohammed the Apostle of God,' is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion.

The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.