John Lothrop Motley quotes:

Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome.

In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.

A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.

In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.

The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands.

The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times.

For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the swarming nations are now in full career.

The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies.

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.

Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty.

The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.

A good lawyer is a bad Christian.

With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people.

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.

The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests.

The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude.

Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.

When did one man ever civilize a people?

Local self-government"¦is the life-blood of liberty.

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.

Wealth brings strength, strength confidence.

To the Calvinists, more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England, and America are due.

A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman.

A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold.

History shows how feeble are barriers of paper.

A talent for repartee is one that increases with practice.

A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessities.

The finger of the atheists' own divinity, Reason, wrote on the wall the appalling judgments that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken.