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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.

Baron de Montesquieu

Virtue is necessary to a republic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Republic Virtue
I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Religious Spirit War
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cutting Politics Progression Smooth
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Succession Vain
Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Certain Foolishness Kind
Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Away Carried Gentle Rivers
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Corruption Degrees Government
Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Disappointment Reading Sovereign
There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Birth Death Men Weep
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Mathematics Three Triangles
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Relation
As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Equality Men War
When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Manners Want
Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Causes Greater Slowness
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Atheism Atheist Law
The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Machines Passion Ruins
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Learning Littles Study
The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens Men Naked
Power should be a check on power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Evil Good
Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Clever Injustice Threat
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Another Doors Fortune Window
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Hands Heart might
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Diversity Movement
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Delight Dull Reading
A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

People Style Writing
Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens May Order
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Blood Kingdoms Philosophical

With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.

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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.

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Popular Authors

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