Top 31 Quotes & Sayings by John Lothrop Motley
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American historian John Lothrop Motley.
Last updated on September 19, 2024.
When did one man ever civilize a people?
The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.
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.
Wealth brings strength, strength confidence.
The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests.
Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.
Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed, daily, stronger.
A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold.
The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands.
In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.
History shows how feeble are barriers of paper.
The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.
A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.
The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times.
The sword - the first, for a time the only force: the force of iron.
Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty.
The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude.
With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people.
A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.
A good lawyer is a bad Christian.
Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.
A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman.
The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies.
For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the swarming nations are now in full career.
In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.
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.
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.
To the Calvinists, more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England, and America are due.
Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessities.
A talent for repartee is one that increases with practice.
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