The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.

But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.

It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.

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.

It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.

[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.