Historian

When did one man ever civilize a people?

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

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

Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed, daily, stronger.

A good lawyer is a bad Christian.

History shows how feeble are barriers of paper.

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

A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman.

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

Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.

The sword - the first, for a time the only force: the force of iron.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests.