But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.

[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

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

The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.

In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.

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