The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome...
The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasti...
But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed,...
But his days were shortened by poison, perhaps the most incurable of poisons; the stings of remorse and despair, and the bitter remembrance of lost glory.
War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
The pilgrimage of Italy, which I now accomplished, had long been the object of my curious devotion. The passage of Mount Cenis, the regular streets of Turin, the Gothic cathedral of Milan, the scenery...
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.
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
Whose one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant.]
He forgot that the best of omens is to unsheathe our sword in the defence of our country.
Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.
It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, in...
Five times was Athanasius expelled from his throne; twenty years he passed as an exile or a fugitive; and almost every province of the Roman empire was successively witness to his merit, and his suffe...
During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment.
Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
The vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
[A historian] will more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have...
The descendants of Abraham were flattered by the opinion, that they alone were the heirs of the covenant, and they were apprehensive of diminishing the value of their inheritance, by sharing it too ea...