I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.

We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.

But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times . . .

The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives; and a nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, Whether those tender victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation which they sustained, had lost, by their misfortune, the glorious crown of virginity. There were other losses indeed of a more substantial kind and more general concern.

A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.