To defend a post of importance against a powerful enemy requires an Eliot; a drunken invalid is qualified to hoist a white flag, or to deliver up the keys of the fortress on his knees.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

It is fair to believe that we cannot realize how precious every relic and every accurate piece of information—every monument and tablet—will seem when at last the days of Braddock and Johnson, Washington and Clark and Wayne are lost in three hundred years of change and evolution.
— from Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent by Archer Butler Hulbert

If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be made to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere the same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul.
— from The Religion of the Ancient Celts by J. A. (John Arnott) MacCulloch

For in whatever government any one man enjoys perpetual power, especially royalty, although even a Senate may exist in it, as was the case at Rome under the kings, and in the laws of Lycurgus at Sparta; and even granting the people some share in the government, as was the fact under our kings: still that royal name will stand pre-eminent, nor can a government of that kind be any thing but a kingdom, or be called otherwise.
— from The republic of Cicero Translated from the Latin; and Accompanied With a Critical and Historical Introduction. by Marcus Tullius Cicero

To defend a post of importance against a powerful enemy, requires an Elliot; a drunken invalid is qualified to hoist a white flag, or to deliver up the keys of the fortress on his knees.
— from Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke by Edmund Burke