Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
The Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.
It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.
In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .
The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.
Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.
But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.
[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.
Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.
Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
Feeble and timid minds . . . consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence.
From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.
It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.
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.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.
The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events
[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.
Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies.
The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved the peace by a constant preparation for war.
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.
The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.