John Lothrop Motley Quotations

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

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

Wealth brings strength, strength confidence.

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

A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman.

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

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.

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

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.

Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty.