So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries.

This is no time to make new enemies.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

History is fables agreed upon.

Do you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.