People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.
The confidence with which a Sovereign is invested, is solid only when it is sanctioned by the suffrages of the people, who clothed him with the supreme magistracy.
We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost.
If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.