His occasional remarks on the affairs of ancient Rome and of modern Europe are full of errors: but he writes of times with respect to which almost every other writer has been in the wrong; and, therefore, by resolutely deviating from his predecessors, he is often in the right.
Almost all the modern historians of Greece have shown the grossest ignorance of the most obvious phenomena of human nature.

In their representations the generals and statesmen of antiquity are absolutely divested of all individuality.

They are personifications; they are passions, talents, opinions, virtues, vices, but not men.

Inconsistency is a thing of which these writers have no notion.

That a man may have been liberal in his youth and avaricious in his age, cruel to one enemy and merciful to another, is to them utterly inconceivable.