The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgment as doth anger

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .