It is the natural fault of young people to think too well of mankind [...]. - Georg Forster

It is unhappy enough that the unavoidable consequence of all our voyages of discovery, has always been the loss of a number of innocent lives; but this heavy injury done to the little uncivilized communities which Europeans have visited, is trifling when compared to the irretrievable harm entailed upon them by corrupting their morals. If these evils were in some measure compensated by the introduction of some real benefit in these countries, or by the abolition of some other immoral customs among their inhabitants, we might at least comfort ourselves, that what they lost on one hand, they gained on the other; but I fear that hitherto our intercourse has been wholly disadvantageous to the nations of the South Seas; and that those communities have been the least injured, who have always kept aloof from us, and whose jealous disposition did not suffer our sailors to become too familiar among them, as if they had perceived in their countenances that levity of disposition, and that spirit of debauchery, with which they are generally reproached.

The degree of pleasure which may result from the perusal of a work, depends not only upon the variety of the subject, but likewise upon the purity and graces of style. We must resign all pretensions to taste and sentiment, if we did not prefer a well-told tale to a lame and tedious narration. Of late, however, the just esteem in which an elegant diction is held, has been so far abused, that authors, relying on the fluency of their language, have paid no attention to the matter which they proposed, but deceived the public with a dry and uninstructive performance.

[...] each vulgar opinion, proved to be erroneous, is an approximation to truth [...].