After having gone over the whole world and visited all the inhabitants, I find it does not answer the pains I have taken. I have just been reviewing my memoirs concerning the several nations, their prejudices, their customs and manners, their politicks, their laws, their religion, their history; and I have thrown them all into the fire. It grieves me to record such a monstrous mixture of humanity and barbarousness, of grandeur and meanness, of reason and folly.
The small part, I have preserv’d, is what I am now publishing. If it has no other merit, certainly it has novelty to recommend it. - Summary by Introduction to Giphantia