The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.

The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.

The land was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth.

Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.

[Arabs are] a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack.

During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.