Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .

[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.

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

The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious fortunes and their lives.

[The Goths'] poverty was incurable; since the most liberal donatives were soon dissipated in wasteful luxury, and the most fertile estates became barren in their hands.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.