It is of eloquence as of a flame; it requires matter to feed it, and motion to excite it; and it brightens as it burns.

Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation.

This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.

A man in power, once becoming obnoxious, his acts, good or bad, will work out his ruin.

Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears.

They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.

You might believe a good man easily, a great man with pleasure. -Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter