There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU