Baron de Montesquieu Quotes - Page 8

If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.

Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one's ability.

Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.

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.

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

A rational army would run away.

The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.

The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

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.

There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.

Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.