That country [Carthage] was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws; and every step of intestine discord was marked by some deplorable victory of savage man over civilized society.

Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade . . .

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 mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.

The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.

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.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.