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

[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure.

[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.

Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.

The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.