The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.

The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it, their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the honourable epithet of Franks or Freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.

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

The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.