Custom adapts itself to expediency.
They make solitude, which they call peace.
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
To rob, to ravage, to murder, in their imposing language, are the arts of civil policy. When they have made the world a solitude, they call it peace.
So true is it that all transactions of preeminent importance are wrapt in doubt and obscurity; while some hold for certain facts the most precarious hearsays, others turn facts into falsehood; and both are exaggerated by posterity.