From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." - I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.

But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.

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

At the hour of midnight the Salerian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.

Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.

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.