I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the...

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

… but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince

If the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the Tiber had, or if the Nile had not, risen beyond its banks; if the...

It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy

Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.

As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters

The army is the only order of men sufficiently united to concur in the same sentiments, and powerful enough to impose them on the rest of their fellow-citizens; but the temper of soldiers, habituated at...

A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of...

The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.