[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor.

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

We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win.

The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.

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.

So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.