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

- John Lothrop Motley

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

- John Lothrop Motley

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

- John Lothrop Motley

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

- John Lothrop Motley

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments …

- John Lothrop Motley

History shows how feeble are barriers of paper.

- John Lothrop Motley

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…

- John Lothrop Motley

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

- John Lothrop Motley

Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.

- John Lothrop Motley