Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUI have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
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When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
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In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.
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Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
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There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
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The spirit of commerce… renders every man willing to live on his own property…& prevents the growth of luxury.
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When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
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Virtue is necessary to a republic.
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If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
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The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread… and a thousand other things of the same kind.
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU