A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

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.

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.

In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.

This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.

In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.