"Montesquieu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Louis XV., whom the petulant poet so strongly repelled by the vivacity and even the familiarity of his praises. She thought she had found a genius in Crebillon and honoured him accordingly. She showed favour to Gresset; she protected Marmontel; she welcomed Duclos; she admired Montesquieu and plainly showed it. She would have liked to serve Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When the King of Prussia ostentatiously gave d'Alembert a modest pension and Louis XV. was scoffing in her presence at the amount (1200 livres), in comparison with the term sublime genius, for which ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the economist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men in general. It is for this reason that Montesquieu observed, very justly, that, in their classification of the citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made the greatest display of their powers, and even soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legislators have gone deep into the negative ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it over her shoulders in case it should be needed. Ambassadors and ministers she summoned before her, assuming that air of royalty which she had purchased with her merchantable charms. Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, waited in her ante-chambers, and implored her patronage. The haughty mistress became even ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... of troops that may be brought into the field in times of great emergency is, of course, much greater than can be supported during a long war, or as a part of a permanent military establishment. Montesquieu estimates that modern nations are capable of supporting, without endangering their power, a permanent military force of about one-hundredth part of their population. This ratio differs but little from that of the present military establishments of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... been produced, how the transformations were effected. The appearance of this problem was almost simultaneous with the rise of rationalism, and the great historians and thinkers of the eighteenth century, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Gibbon, attempted to explain the movement of civilisation by purely natural causes. These brilliant writers prepared the way for the genetic history of the following century. But in the spirit of the Aufklarung, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... admirers: it forms a part of their character; a false delicacy has interfered. Erasmus did not like to have his own diminutive person sent down to posterity, but Holbein was always affectionately painting his friend. Montesquieu once sat to Dassier the medallist, after repeated denials, won over by the ingenious argument of the artist; "Do you not think," said Dassier, "that there is as much pride in refusing my offer as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the mind as well as of the senses, criticising everything, analyzing everything, believing nothing. Voltaire was in the midst of it, hating, with all his vehement soul, the abuses that swarmed about him, and assailing them with the inexhaustible shafts of his restless and piercing intellect. Montesquieu was showing to a despot-ridden age the principles of political freedom. Diderot and D'Alembert were beginning their revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes of his mad eloquence,—the wild revolt of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... at the fourth edition of his book, sometimes getting eleven hours of work, 'a good day as times go,'—Montesquieu, Burke, Bacon, Clarendon, and others of the masters of civil and historic wisdom being laid under ample contribution. By Christmas he was at Hawarden. In January he made a speech at a meeting held in Liverpool for the foundation of a church union, and a few days later he hurried ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the English view, sprang also the great intellectual movement of the age. Voltaire visited the England of Addison and Pope; Montesquieu studied the English Constitution of 1689; and these two men were the writers who overthrew absolutism in Europe, who paved the way for the epoch of Revolution that was to follow. Montesquieu's Persian Letters, satirizing French society, appeared as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... She was eager that he should come to Russia to superintend the instruction of the young Grand Duke. But D'Alembert was too prudent to go to St. Petersburg, as he was too prudent to go to Berlin. Montesquieu had died five years before her accession, but his influence remained. She habitually called the Spirit of Laws the breviary of kings, and when she drew up her Instruction for a new code, she acknowledged how much she ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the proposition submitted by Paterson of New Jersey, in the early sittings of the Convention, for a mere enlargement of the powers of the Confederation, was decisively rejected. With the light that could be gleaned from the pages of Montesquieu, the suggestive lessons to be drawn from the fate of the short-lived republics whose wrecks lay along the pathway of history, and from the unwritten Constitution of the mother country, as their only guides, the leaders of the Convention were at once in the difficult ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Warren Hastings. There this first awakening consciousness of an Imperial destiny declares itself in a very dramatic and pronounced form indeed. Yet Burke's range in speculative politics, compared with that of such a writer as Montesquieu, is narrow. His conception of history at its highest is but an anticipation of the picturesque but pragmatic school of which Macaulay is coryphaeus. In religion he revered the traditions, and acquiesced in the commonplaces of his time. ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... without such a consideration for the use of their money as is suitable, not only to what can be made by the use of it, but to the difficulty and danger of evading the law. The high rate of interest among all Mahometan nations is accounted for by M. Montesquieu, not from their poverty, but partly from this, and partly from the difficulty ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... from parliament to king, during the wars of the Fronde. These were the people of whom he treasured up the smallest memorial, of whom he loved to hear the most trifling anecdote, and for whose likenesses he would have given any price. Of the great French writers of his own time, Montesquieu is the only one of whom he speaks with enthusiasm. And even of Montesquieu he speaks with less enthusiasm than of that abject thing, Crebillon the younger, a scribbler as licentious as Louvet and as dull as Rapin. A man must be strangely constituted who can take interest in pedantic journals ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... political Lazzaroni capable of being organized by wealth in opposition to the higher order of workmen and the middle class. In Harrington's "Oceana," there is much nonsense, but it rises at least to the level of Montesquieu in tracing the intimate connection of political power, even under elective institutions, with wealth ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... my readers are disturbed by this thorny question, I beg leave to recommend, to them Letter 69 of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes; and the late Mr. John Palmer of Islington's Answer to Dr. Priestley's mechanical arguments for what he absurdly calls 'Philosophical Necessity.' BOSWELL. See post, under Aug. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... garlands in olden times are numerous in the literature of the past, and it may be remembered how Montesquieu remarked that it was with two or three hundred crowns of oak that ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of the Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily wants of civil society. I announce at this table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and for itself. Anything less is a fraud. Emerson nearly reached this conclusion, as witness the following passage: "A happy symbol is a sort of evidence that your thought is just. . . . If you agree with me, or if Locke or Montesquieu agree, I may yet be wrong; but if the elm tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what I say, it must be true." Here Emerson is all but clean out of the tangle. He speaks of ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... {32} M. Montesquieu, notwithstanding his very superior knowledge, accuracy, and acuteness, enlarges upon this subject; and never takes any notice of the corrupt, mercenary, and degraded state into which Rome fell when it became as rich ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are blank in history's book." Let ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Sincerity will determine that use. Nothing more than a general rule can be laid down. Eloquence, as I said before, cannot spring from the simple desire to be eloquent; the desire usually leads to grandiloquence. But Sincerity will save us. We have but to remember Montesquieu's advice: "Il faut prendre garde aux grandes phrases dans les humbles sujets; elles produisent l'effet d'une masque a barbe blanche sur ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... philosophy which at that period represented the really living stream of thought. To be a man of enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of Locke. Locke represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice. Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Beccaria, and Barrington. Helvetius especially did much to suggest to him his leading principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helvetius' De l'Esprit.[216] Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774), should give ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and the slave; Cruelty the product of arbitrary power; Testimony of Thomas Jefferson; Judge Tucker; Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina, and Georgia; General William H. Harrison; President Edwards; Montesquieu; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... independent of Port Warrender. This gulf is thickly strewed with islands and reefs: a group off Cape Voltaire was seen by the French and named by them the INSTITUTE ISLANDS, the three principal of which, of flat-topped shape, are called Descartes, Fenelon, and Corneille; besides these the Montesquieu Group, and Pascal and Condillac Islands, were distinguished. On the eastern side of the gulf, near the shore, are OSBORN'S ISLANDS, which are high and rocky: the southernmost is remarkable for its steep, precipitous form, and for ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... vanquished and the victors of Hastings blended into one nation, and they are endowed with a Parliament as a safeguard for their liberties. "This is," Montesquieu said later, "the nation in the world that has best known how to avail itself at the same time of those three great things: religion, trade, and liberty."[424] Four hundred years before Montesquieu it already availed itself of these three great things; under Edward and Richard Plantagenets, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... have been plunged by it in beggary, and overwhelmed by it in vice. Think how many persons have become liars at the gaming table; how many perjured; how many drunkards; how many blasphemers; how many suicides. 'If Europe,' said Montesquieu, 'is to be ruined, it will be ruined by gaming.' If the United States are to be ruined, gaming in some of its forms will be a very efficient ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the admired weapon from its resting-place, proceeded to lecture on its virtues, its antiquity, and its beauty. Vivian seized this opportunity of taking a rapid glance at the contents of the library. He anticipated interleaved copies of Machiavel, Vattel, and Montesquieu; and the lightest works that he expected to meet with were the lying memoirs of some intriguing cardinal or the deluding apology of an exiled minister. To his surprise, he found that, without an exception, the collection consisted of poetry and romance. Somewhat surprised, Vivian ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Masonry in action. All the revolutionaries of the Constituent Assembly were initiated into the third degree. We place in this class the Duc d'Orleans, Valence, Syllery, Laclos, Sieyes, Petion, Menou, Biron, Montesquieu, Fauchet, Condorcet, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Garat, Rabaud, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... said he, "or I should rather say the Marchioness of Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad to seize both ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... times. Hale studied for many years at the rate of sixteen hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law, he would recreate himself with philosophy and the study of mathematics. Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while preparing his History of England. Montesquieu, speaking of one part of his writings, said to a friend, 'You will read it in a few hours; but I assure you that it has cost me so much labour that it has whitened ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... all States, or the "Esprit des Lois," as Montesquieu maintains, should be the security to each member of the community of all "those absolute rights which are vested in them by the immutable ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... crudeness of the whole exposition and the intrusion of astrological arguments, it is a new step in the study of universal history. [Footnote: Climates and geography. The fullest discussion will be found in the Republique, Book v. cap. i. Here Bodin anticipated Montesquieu. There was indeed nothing new in the principle; it had been recognised by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and other Greeks, and in a later ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote was complicated with Montesquieu's president. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... sneer as much as they please at the idea of heart in politics; but if history teaches anything, it teaches that human progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the head are shifting. "When God," says Montesquieu, "endowed human beings with brains, he did not intend to guaranty them." And the sarcasm of the French philosopher is fully justified, when we reflect that nothing mean, base, or cruel has ever been done in this world, which has not been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... "Cancan Eccentrique," introduced by a personage called "La Princesse de Mogador," a feigned name, as you may suppose, assumed by some fille perdue. These dances, commenced at the Chaumiere and the Bal Mabille, were also introduced at the Bal Montesquieu, at the Bal de la Cite d'Antin, and, if I mistake not, at the Bal Valentino. The principal performers were students in law, in medicine, in pharmacy, clerks, commis voyageurs, profligate tradesmen, and lorettes, grisettes, et filles de ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... remark that a Persian of Montesquieu, a Huron of Voltaire, even a simple Peruvian woman of Madame de Graffigny, reasons much more wisely about European civilization than an American of San Francisco. The fact is, that it is not sufficient to have wit, or even natural taste, in order ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... private household of the Empress, as well as Madame de Montesquieu, were gathered in the apartment, the Emperor, his mother, sisters, Messieurs Corvisart, Bourdier, and Yvan in ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... felt quite sure that they would have to establish civil government there. So he made up an excellent collection of books,—De Lolme on the British Constitution; Montesquieu on Laws; Story, Kent, John Adams, and all the authorities here; with ten copies of his own address delivered before the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society of Podunk, on the "Abnormal Truths of Social Order." He telegraphed to know what night he should ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... great hall of this building the members of the Academy hold their sittings; the vestibules are adorned by marble statues of men whose intellectual powers have rendered their names renowned throughout the world, as Montesquieu, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Sully, etc., etc. The Mazarine library is attached to this institution and contains 120,000 printed volumes besides 4,500 manuscripts. There is also under the same establishment the library of the Institute, which ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter, Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau, Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... ear attentive; the subject is a la mode, and those who laugh are as great votaries of the science as any others are. This should satisfy you. Do you remember too, that the greatest men have sometimes written books on very trivial subjects,-Montesquieu, for example. [Footnote: M. de Monjucla, known as the author of an excellent history of mathematics, made a Dictionary of Gourmand Geography; he showed me portions of it during my residence at Versailles. It is said that M. Berryat-Professor of legal practice, has written ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... land of despotism. They haven't any rights. Don't you know the fine definition Montesquieu gives of despotism. 'Like the savage, it cuts down the tree to gather the fruits.' They ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... for this he read 'most of the writers upon the theory of politics—Hooker, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Linguet, Locke, Bentham, and many more.' 'Many more' included some very unusual reading; for the plan of his book was in three chapters, 'the first chapter being upon the Radicalism of the days before the coming of Jesus; the second ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... 'Adventures of Dirk Peters, the Half-Breed,' he would have sold twice as many books. My friend is about to publish his book. 'Its name?' I asked him. 'There can be little choice of names for a translation of Montesquieu's "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans," with notes by myself,' he replied. 'There can't?' said I; 'well, my friend, let me tell you there can. Now compare this name: "Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... intimate friend of Montesquieu, the famous author of the 'Esprit des Lois' and the most far-seeing of those whose writings preceded and presaged the French Revolution, who wrote, 'Mes sentiments pour vous sont gravs dans mon cur et dans mon esprit d'une manire ne ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... and, as it seemed, non-university audience in the same amphitheatre in Paris listening just after midday to a lecture on Montesquieu, and I had not sufficient imagination to picture such an audience as near the Stock Exchange of Chicago as the Sorbonne is to the Bourse—in that western city where men take hardly time at that hour of day to eat, much less to philosophize. They will not pause to hear ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... St. Paul's Churchyard, with a new daily newspaper, 'The Public Ledger'. For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote the 'Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern' and the 'Adventures of a Strolling Player,' besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the 'Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy, which was ultimately to become the English classic known as 'The Citizen of the World'. He continued to produce ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Mr. Godwin) "from Judge Blackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it, to shew that the race of mankind ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the British Constitution in any sense whatever. It is built on wholly different principles, drawn mostly from the French speculations of that age. Especially one notes, alongside of the careful and wise separation of the judiciary from the executive, the sound principle enunciated by Montesquieu and other French thinkers of the eighteenth century, but rejected and contemned by England (to her great hurt) as a piece of impracticable logic—the separation of the executive and legislative powers. It was this principle which ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossible to overlook the evil that the Chustions, so admirable in the desert, did the state when they were in power. "When I think," said Montesquieu, "of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract their ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... [Footnote 37: Montesquieu is declared by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater originality and depth ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... from his deafness, yet still anxious to please. 'It is very sad,' he said, with his usual politeness, 'to be deaf, when one would so much enjoy listening. I am not,' he added, 'so philosophic as my friend the President de Montesquieu, who says, "I know how to be blind, but I do not yet know how to be deaf."' 'We shortened our visit,' says M. Suard, 'lest we should fatigue the earl.' 'I do not detain you,' said Chesterfield, 'for I must go and rehearse my funeral.' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... shown, that should even that doctrine of non-interference have been established by the founders of your republic, that which might have been very proper to your infancy would not now be suitable to your manhood. It is a beautiful word of Montesquieu, that republics are to be founded on virtue. And you know that virtue between man and man, as sanctioned by our Christian religion, is but an exercise of that great principle—"Thou shalt do to others as thou desirest ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... principle is to concentrate on important movements, not on idle details. This was not characteristic of the individual author only, but of the spirit of the age. It is equally present in the works of Montesquieu and Turgot. The defects of Montesquieu are chiefly due to the fact that his materials were intractable, because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalising the laws of their phenomena. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Merlin de la Blottiere and de Villenoix being considered as enemies by all the salons which Mademoiselle Gamard frequented, there was at the bottom of the quarrel a class sentiment with all its jealousies. It was the old Roman struggle of people and senate in a molehill, a tempest in a teacup, as Montesquieu remarked when speaking of the Republic of San Marino, whose public offices are filled by the day only,—despotic power being easily seized ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... great the agricultural booty to be gathered in the plains around Rome, that for two hundred years after the foundation of the city, it was the great object of their foreign wars to gain possession of it, and on that account they were generally begun in autumn. Montesquieu has observed, that it was the long and desperate wars which the Romans carried on for three centuries with the Sabines, Latines, Veientes, and other people in their neighbourhood, which by slow degrees gave them the hardihood and discipline which enabled them afterwards to subdue the world. The ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... have supplied facts for such a work as that of Montesquieu? He indeed has been, perhaps justly, charged with abusing this advantage, by the undistinguishing adoption of the narratives of travellers of very different degrees of accuracy and veracity. But if we reluctantly confess the justness of this objection; if we are compelled to own that he exaggerates ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... Montesquieu infers that the law which permits polygamy is physically conformable to the climate of Asia. The season of female beauty precedes that of their reason, and from its prematurity soon decays. The empire ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... time unbelief so far prevailed that even men who were not professed assailants, as Montesquieu, Condillac, Turgot, were estranged from Christianity. Politically, the consequence was this: men who did not attribute any deep significance to church questions never acquired definite notions on Church and State, never seriously examined under what conditions religion may be established ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... part in a literary club in Port Louis, Le Societe d'Emulation Intellectuelle, and this association helped greatly to increase his knowledge of the literary world. He read literature, history, travels, philosophy, politics and such authors as Lamennais, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Horace Say, Ricardo and the like. He read not only because of his love of reading but because he was ambitious to prepare himself for larger duties. The largest duty as he seemed to see it was the freedom of his ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good book.—JOHN ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Turkey, Persia, or China. The attempt to convert an ancient Eastern despotism, firmly established on a theocratic basis, a country in which the Koran and the Multeka are the law of the land, into a Western democracy based on the secular speculations of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, and Spencer was ridiculous. The revolution effected only an outward change. It introduced some Western innovations, but altered neither the character of the Government nor that of the people. Turkish Parliamentarism became a sham and a make-believe. The cruel absolutism of Abdul ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that they might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; that is just how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this monster reigns almost everybody is blind. In ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... rather appears to be the result of the injustice which women suffer by polygamy; for it seems to reign, as much in Constantinople, and in every other place where polygamy is in fashion, as it does on the banks of the Ganges, or the Indus. The famous Montesquieu, whose system was, that the passions are entirely regulated by the climate, brings as a proof of this system, a story from the collection of voyages for the establishment of an East India Company, in which it is said, that at Patan, "the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... nevertheless, ever since—waiting for much more than a century; and perhaps the end is not even yet. Why, then, have expectations not only within but without the empire been so greatly at fault? How came Montesquieu, Burke, and other confident prophets since their time to be so signally mistaken? There were several co-operating causes, but one paramount. Constantinople was no longer, as in 1453, a matter of concern only to itself, its immediate neighbours, and certain trading republics of Italy. It ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... under pretext of wishing to read some favourite book again, she read aloud, alternately with the abbe, passages from Condillac, Fenelon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jean Jacques, and even from Montaigne and Montesquieu. These passages, it is true, were chosen beforehand and adapted to my powers. I understood them fairly well, and I secretly wondered at this; for if during the day I opened these same books at random, I found myself brought to a standstill at every ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Library, enable us to follow his movements. On much that is obscurely indicated in scarcely decipherable scrawls, light is thrown by the French memoirs of that age. The names of Madame de Talmond, Madame d'Aiguillon, and the celebrated Montesquieu, are beacons in the general twilight. The memoirs also explain, what was previously inexplicable, the motives of Charles in choosing a life 'in a hole of a rock,' as he said after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... disappear, Fontenelle is an excellent mathematician, the competent biographer of all eminent men of science, the official secretary and true representative of the Academy of Sciences. In other places, in the Academy of Bordeaux, Montesquieu reads discourses on the mechanism of the echo, and on the use of the renal glands; he dissects frogs, tests the effect of heat and cold on animated tissues, and publishes observations on plants and insects.—Rousseau, the least instructed of all, attends the lectures of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and the women attendant upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number. We know that his sons amounted to twenty,—or, according to Mr. Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu supposes that there are more females born in the East than in the West. But he says this upon no good ground. We know by better and more regular information concerning this matter, that the birth of males ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... and the word "voila," truths expressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm. It is, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so many eminent French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Montesquieu, and Vauvenargues, each contributed to the rich stock of French epigrams. No other country can show such a list of brilliant writers—in England certainly we cannot. Our most celebrated, Lord Bacon, has, by his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their fame is, to a great measure, obscured. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... the Russian sky at the accession of Catherine II (1762-1796). This "Semiramis of the North," the admirer of Buffon, Montesquieu, Diderot, and, more especially, Voltaire, whose motto, N'en croyez rien, she adopted, endeavored, and for a while not without success, to introduce into her own country the spirit of tolerance which pervaded France. Her ukases were intended ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Convention, and met in the various conventions called by the states to consider the ratification of that great instrument. They not only knew that common law, but they had studied closely the political history of Greece and Rome, and were familiar with the principles of government as set forth by Montesquieu and Adam Smith. ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... Testament. The New Testament. The Koran. The Vedan. Mythology. Montesquieu. The Esprit ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... decisive truth about them. He falls precisely into those errors of the raison raisonnante, about which, in his description of the intellectual preparation of the great overthrow, he has said so many just and acute things. Nothing can be more really admirable than M. Taine's criticism upon Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, as great masters of language (pp. 339-361). All this is marked by an amplitude of handling, a variety of approach, a subtlety of perception, a fulness of comprehension, which give a very different notion of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... remarkable passage, so curious in political history, is commented on by Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws. vi 11. That celebrated author expresses his surprise at the existence of such a balance between liberty and authority in the forests of Germany; and traces the origin of the English constitution from this source. Tacitus ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... this connection to note how Montesquieu, in his "Spirit of Laws," treats this color argument with ridicule. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Oriental letters begun by G.P. Marana with "L'Espion turc" in 1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes" (1721) and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World" (1760).[22] The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure, dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy, Ben-hamar, through the agency of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the Christians of the north of Greece. And we shall yet see the Australian sweeping before him the indolence of the Birman and the Javanese. This he will owe to the sterility of his fields and the half European blasts of his more salubrious and stringent atmosphere. The maxim of Montesquieu, that "poverty always conquers wealth," solves but half the problem. The true solution is, that the poverty of the soil compels the exertion of a vigour, which severity of climate alone can generate among a people. For three hundred years the population of Jutland ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... showing that despotism was the only principle of government acknowledged in India,—that the people have no laws, no rights, no property movable or immovable, no distinction of ranks, nor any sense of disgrace. After citing a long line of travellers to this effect, they quote Montesquieu as asserting the same facts, declaring that the people of India had no sense of honor, and were only sensible of the whip as far as it produced corporal pain. They then proceed to state that it was a government ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... century was marked by a rising of opinion in favor of freedom. The statesmen of Massachusetts read the great work of Montesquieu on the Spirit of Laws; and in bearing their first very remarkable testimony against slavery, they simply adopted his words, repeated without passion,—for they had no dread of the increase of slavery within their own borders, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Decreed, that all emigrants who shall return to France shall suffer death, whether men, women, or children, not excepting those who had never borne arms. 12. Ghent taken by the French. 14. Brussels taken by the French. 19. General Montesquieu emigrates. 23. De la Coste, ex-minister, and Du Fresne de St. Leon, committed to the prison of the Abbaye. 24. Insurrection at Chartres and the neighbourhood, on account of bread. 25. The King asks of the convention some Latin books, that he may instruct his son himself. 26. Address from Finisterre ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... different: Hobbes relies on sophism; Grotius relies on the poets; they are agreed in everything else. In modern times the only man who could have created this vast and useless science was the illustrious Montesquieu. But he was not concerned with the principles of political law; he was content to deal with the positive laws of settled governments; and nothing could be more different than these two branches ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the personal character of Buffon. He was vain and superficial, and given to extravagant speculations. He is reported to have said, "I know but five great geniuses—Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." His natural vanity was undoubtedly fostered by the adulation which he received from those in authority. He saw his own statue placed in the cabinet of Louis XVI., with the inscription "Majestati Naturae par ingenium." Louis XV. bestowed upon him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... for the government of men under a despotic rule, whose essential principle is a salutary fear of the prince in all his public officers. Every unlettered native of India is as sensible of this principle [as] Montesquieu was; and will tell us that, in countries like India, a chief, to govern well, must have a smack of the devil ('shaitan') in him; for, if he has not, his public servants will prey upon his innocent and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or public schools, in which ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... would know why this poor, little one was clothed all in black. His governess answered that it was, no doubt, because his papa was dead. He manifested a strong desire to talk with the child.—Madame Montesquieu, who seized every occasion of developing his sensibility, consented, and gave an order that he should be brought in with his mother. She was a widow whose husband had been killed in the last campaign, and finding herself without resources, had petitioned the emperor for a pension. The young ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, have treated of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded on hearsay evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone.* His delightful 'History of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay', is ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... a writer in the New York Gazette, April 8, 1776, as quoted by Mr. Oscar Straus, in his admirable little work on "The Origin of the American Republic." "It is a form of government which Baron Montesquieu, and the best writers on the subject, have shown to be attended with many mischiefs and imperfections, while they pay high encomiums on the excellency of the British Constitution. The Continental ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... that if one man lives in laziness another will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being many people without clothes." So one explains the other. We cannot understand the starved and runty {2} toiler of the East End (living with his ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... facts."—Blair's Rhet., p. 379; Jamieson's, 300. "Mr. Addison was the first who attempted a regular inquiry" [into the pleasures of taste.]—Blair's Rhet., p. 28. "One of the first who introduced it was Montesquieu."—Murray's Gram., p. 125. "Massillon is perhaps the most eloquent writer of sermons which modern times have produced."—Blair's Rhet., p. 289. "The greatest barber who ever lived, is our guiding star ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the ancient Persians say: "If you would be holy instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you."—MONTESQUIEU. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... general principles which a husband should put into practice, if he wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his little kingdom. Nevertheless, in spite of what was decided by the minority at the council of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the coming of constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of his writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on the side of the minority), we discern in a woman ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... are wise savers and wise spenders. Montesquieu has said of Alexander: "He found the first means of his prosperity and power in the greatness of his genius; the second, in his frugality and private economy; and the third, in his immense liberality to accomplish great objects. He spent but little on himself; but for public purposes ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and therefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of human history have been given. I refer to the physical determinism of Montesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the anthropological determinism of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events of history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various races ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... per cent. under the consulate of Lucius Manlius Torquatus and Caius Plautius;—as may be seen by referring to the seventh book (16, 27) of Livy,—or still better, the clear exposition of this error by Montesquieu in the 22nd chapter of the 22nd book of his "Esprit des Loix." The author of the Annals is then only right when stating that originally the interest was one per cent. per annum, and afterwards reduced to half ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... near Bordeaux, was Montesquieu: to see whose chateau of La Brede, about four leagues off, is one of the usual excursions of tourists; but we were prevented visiting ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... he said, "reminds me of a passage in which Montesquieu compares the heathen philosophers to those plants which the earth produces in places that have never seen the heavens. The soil of his experience does not grow a single belief; and as no community can exist without a belief of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxi. c. 6. L'Isthme... couvero de villes et nations qui ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Governor of the Universe were dethroned, it would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human conscience against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the words of so calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our laws, presents "such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted." Until the infinite selfishness of the powers that hate and fear the principles of free government swallowed up their convenient virtues, that system was hissed ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have jurisdiction in the kingdom, if by any means a misgovernment should any way fall upon it, the subjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remedy. To the same purpose the president Montesquieu, though I trust too hastily, presages[e]; that as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the constitution of England will in time lose it's liberty, will perish: it will ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... what Michael Angelo said, how Plutarch felt, how Montesquieu thought about the question, and then glances off from it to the terror of the child at the thought of life without end, to the story of the two skeptical statesmen whose unsatisfied inquiry through a long course of years he holds to be a better affirmative ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... are to be found in his hatred towards England, and in the continental system, which resulted from that hatred. This gigantic system, which oppressed all Europe, could not fail to raise the entire continent against Napoleon and France, and thus to bring on the ruin of both. "Rome," as it is said by Montesquieu, "extended her empire because her wars only followed in succession. Each nation, such was her inconceivable good fortune, waited till another had been conquered, before beginning the attack." ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of conduct; what good can we do by vain resistance, by useless efforts? The cool, the distant spectator, placed in safety, may arraign me for ingratitude, may bring forth the principles of Solon or Montesquieu; he may look on me as wilfully guilty; he may call me by the most opprobrious names. Secure from personal danger, his warm imagination, undisturbed by the least agitation of the heart, will expatiate freely on this grand question; and will consider this ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government, prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier, but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries, and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the political acts of our ancestors, we have a right to bring them to the standard of the political science of their age, but we have no right to bring them to the higher standard of our own. Montesquieu could give them but an imperfect clue to the labyrinth in which they found themselves involved; and yet no one had seen farther into the mysteries of social and political organization than Montesquieu. Hume had scattered brilliant rays on dark places, and started ideas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hoofs of wounded and frantic chargers. His men still fought with desperation around their wounded chieftain. Of twenty-five nephews who accompanied him, fifteen were slain by his side. Soon all his defenders were cut down or dispersed. The wounded prince, an invaluable prize, was taken prisoner. Montesquieu, captain of the guards of the Duke of Anjou, came driving up, and as he saw the prisoner attracting much attention, besmeared ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Congress, and our general assemblies. If from the South came the romantic admiration of woman, from the North came a better respect for her rights and the sense of her equality. Our trial by jury was immediately derived from Scandinavia; and, according to Montesquieu, as we have seen, we owe to the North, as the greatest inheritance of all, that desire for freedom which is so chief ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... might venture, therefore, to add another to the definitions of Montesquieu, we might say that the principle animating a liberal constitutional government was liberty, and that this involved a definite plan for enlarging the sphere of liberty as the organising principle of civil society. To what then are we to impute the decadence from this type ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... nobody, and the chap that speaks in the House of Commons is a hero. Lord, Lord, how the world is 'umbugged! Pop'lar representation! what IS pop'lar representation? Dammy, it's a farce. Hallo! this article is stole! I remember a passage in Montesquieu uncommonly like it. [Goes and gets the book. As he is standing upon sofa to get it, and sitting down to read it, MISS PRIOR and the Children have come in at the garden. Children pass across stage. MISS PRIOR enters by open window, bringing flowers ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for Aristotle in his Politics hath proved abundantly to my satisfaction that no men are born to be slaves, except barbarians; and these only to such as are not themselves barbarians; and indeed Mr. Montesquieu hath carried it very little farther in the case of the Africans; the real truth being that no man is born to be a slave, unless to him who is able to make ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... her reading at this epoch was without any order or method. She read everything voraciously, mixing all the philosophers up together. She read Locke, Condillac, Montesquieu, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, but she kept Rousseau apart from the others. She devoured the books of the moralists and poets, La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare. All this reading was too much for her and excited her brain. She had reserved Chateaubriand's ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... legal, and constitutional treatises bearing on history, e.g., Bryce's American Commonwealth; Ostrogorski's Democracy and The Party System; Montesquieu's The Spirit ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... Gods exact it, but to please men; let us tell them to abstain from vice and from crime, not because they will be punished in another world, but because they will suffer in the present world. There are, says Montesquieu, means to prevent crime, they are sufferings; to change the manners, these are good examples. Truth is simple, error is complicated, uncertain in its gait, full of by-ways; the voice of nature is intelligible, that of falsehood is ambiguous, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... follow the successful example, while the civilized world becomes a busy camp, with every citizen a soldier, and with all sounds swallowed up in the tocsin of war. Where, then, are the people? Where are popular rights? Montesquieu has not hesitated to declare that the peril to free governments proceeds from armies, and that this peril is not corrected even by making them depend directly on the legislative power. This is not enough. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... world to which she belonged, could never altogether disavow their contempt for science, if indeed it be true, that she was accustomed to call her society by the indecent by-name of her menagerie. Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Helvetius who was then quite young and present rather as a hearer than a speaker, Marivaux and Astruc, formed the nucleus of this clever society and led the conversation. Marmontel, who was not well suited to this society, in which more real knowledge and a deeper train of thought was called ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, the old serpent, down to the far-famed Stoughton of our own day, does not present so powerful a remedy, amid all its antis, as cheerful reading to a heavy spirit. I will venture to say, in the spirit of Montesquieu, that an hour of such reading will place one quietly in his elbow chair in all the tranquillity of a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... French world had satisfied me, what was not my wonder and joy at discovering in it a reflective side; and for half an hour I remained in a leafy alcove listening to her refined converse,—dealing with books like "Corinne," and "La Chaumiere Indienne,"—La Fontaine, Moliere, Montesquieu,—and especially interesting me in the society which moved around us, which as she touched it with her wand of history and eloquence, acquired an inconceivable interest for me, and I was for the first time proud of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... from 1753 (vol. iv.) to 1767 (vol. xv., containing the New World monkeys, indexes, and the like). Buffon's modus operandi saved him from capital blunders. Though inordinately vain—"I know but five great geniuses," he once said; "Newton, Bacon, Leibniz, Montesquieu, and myself"—he was quite conscious of his own limitations, and had the common-sense to entrust to Daubenton the description of the anatomy and other technical matters as to which his own knowledge was comparatively defective. He reserved to himself what ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... particolare and virtu, individuality and ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: virtu is impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the dominating and unrelenting factors of life. Niccolo Machiavelli, unlike Montesquieu, agreed with Martin Luther that man was bad. It was for both the Wittenberger and the Florentine, in their very separate ways, to found the school and wield the scourge. In the naked and unashamed candour ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the "arrogance" with which such a man as Montesquieu is described as "the fanciful Montesquieu," by "an eleemosynary politician, who writes on the subject merely because he has been rewarded for writing otherwise all ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which half an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... David Hume and Charles Comte, C. Montesquieu in his L'Esprit des Lois, and Henry Thomas Buckle in his HISTORY OF CIVILISATION IN ENGLAND, have dilated upon the influence which climate exerts over race, and all their forceful opinions are to the effect that the character of a people is moulded by climatic conditions. More than this, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... to go on. Where single women are licentious, you rarely find faithful married women.' BOSWELL. 'And yet we are told that in some nations in India, the distinction is strictly observed.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, don't give us India. That puts me in mind of Montesquieu, who is really a fellow of genius too in many respects; whenever he wants to support a strange opinion, he quotes you the practice of Japan or of some other distant country, of which he knows nothing. To support polygamy, he tells you of the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... realize," he said, "the spirit of the age. We are highly irreligious in France; impiety is deeply rooted in our soil. You do not know the progress achieved by the ideas of Montesquieu, Raynal and Rousseau. Public worship is abolished; veneration is a thing of the past. You must have seen this from the scandalous talk my officers indulged in just ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Napoleon, nodding toward the ministers, "sire, will these gentlemen not betray me to Madame de Montesquieu?" ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... there in the thought of the age, external to Great Britain, any corrective of the impressions which dominated her commercial policy. "Commercial monopoly," wrote Montesquieu, "is the leading principle of colonial intercourse;" and an accomplished West Indian, quoting this phrase about 1790, says: "The principles by which the nations of Europe were influenced were precisely the same: (1) to secure to themselves respectively the most important productions of their ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... great writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who talked about constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less astonishing than the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... morals is holy, just and good, its doctrine is dignified and glorious; its tendency is to purity and peace; "it is pure, peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits; without partiality, and without hypocrisy." Montesquieu, the publisher of the Persian letters and president of the parliament of Bordeaux, says: "The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blessed with the best political and civil laws, ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... conscience, shifting the onus of responsibility on to others, and agreeing to believe, as it were, by proxy. She had plunged fearlessly and headlong into Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Mably, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, Montesquieu; beginning to call many things in question, and, through the darkness and confusion into which she was sometimes thrown, trying honestly and sincerely to feel her way to some more glorious ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, Crebillon, Lombardini, Thomas Campbell, Carducci, Napoleon, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... of any real advance began to appear; for Law's famous scheme (1716-1720) only served as a drag upon the growth of economic truth. But in the middle of the eighteenth century an intellectual revival set in: the "Encyclopaedia" was published, Montesquieu wrote his "l'Esprit des Lois," Rousseau was beginning to write, and Voltaire was at the height of his power. In this movement political economy had an important share, and there resulted the first school ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... from being able to oppress, says Baron Montesquieu,[49] it is requisite that the armies with which it is entrusted should consist of the people, and have the same spirit with the people; as was the case at Rome, till Marius new modeled the legions by enlisting the rabble of Italy, and laid the foundation of all the military tyranny that ensued. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... of the father, in suppressing great responsibilities; but is the reconstructed social state as solid, with its young laws still untried, as it was under a monarchy, in spite of the old abuses? In losing the solidarity of families, society has lost that fundamental force which Montesquieu discovered and named HONOR. It has isolated interests in order to subjugate them; it has sundered all to enfeeble all. Society reigns over units, over single figures agglomerated like grains of corn in a heap. Can the general interests ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Montesquieu, the most profound of the political writers of the eighteenth century, did his part in opening the eyes of thoughtful Frenchmen to the disadvantages of their government by his eulogy of the limited monarchy of England. He pointed out that the freedom which Englishmen enjoyed was due to the fact ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... cries the doctor to his friend, who had been worrying himself and his correspondent with philosophical questions, on which some six years before he had got some light from the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu. 'Come to me, my dear Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can. We will go again to the Mitre, and talk old times over.' Thrice during the 1781 visit to London do we see his unfortunate habits breaking out; and, when we find him saying he has unfortunately ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... l'Esprit"[1]? The author is so good and moral a man, that I grieve he should have published a system of as relaxed morality as can well be imagined: 'tis a large quarto, and in general a very superficial one. His philosophy may be new in France, but it greatly exhausted here. He tries to imitate Montesquieu,[2] and has heaped common-places upon common-places, which supply or overwhelm his reasoning; yet he has often wit, happy allusions, and sometimes writes finely: there is merit enough to give an obscure man fame; flimsiness enough to depreciate ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... and the very desire to see things as they are, implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says: "The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent."[391] This is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Corinne, addressing herself to the Count d'Erfeuil—"your prose writers are often more eloquent, and even more poetic, than your poets."—"It is true," answered the Count, "your assertion can be verified by truly classical authorities:—Bossuet, La Bruyere, Montesquieu, and Buffon, cannot be excelled; more particularly the first two, who are of the age of Louis the Fourteenth, in whose praise too much cannot be said, for they are perfect models for imitation. They are models ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... given us; but we should scarcely expect to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Stael full and masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the effect of English influence and American example in preparing the Revolution, and of the part played by Germans and Swedes in French politics. At the same time, the pictures ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... exceeds his power he becomes a tyrant, and that people are justified in rejecting the doctrine of passive obedience and slaying him. See Buchanan, "De Jure Apud Scotos" (Aberdeen, 1762); Dunning, "History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu"; and P. Hume Brown, "Biography of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... already gone so far, that Townshend brought Chesterfield over from the Hague, last Autumn;—a Baron de Montesquieu, with the ESPRIT DE LOIS in his head, sailed with Lord Chesterfield on that occasion, and is now in England "for two years;"—but Chesterfield could not be made Secretary; industrious Duke of Newcastle ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV. During this reign the nation continued on the decline. He was followed by his grandson, Louis XVI., a better man than his immediate predecessor, but too weak to carry out the reforms necessary to restore the prosperity of the nation. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and many other writers, as well as the influence of the American Revolution, had fostered democratic ideas among the people, for the government was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of Shakespeare, he says somewhere, or 'only remind us of their names,' and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. That is the scholar's speech. Opening a single essay at random, we find in it citations from Montesquieu, Schiller, Milton, Herodotus, Shelley, Plutarch, Franklin, Bacon, Van Helmont, Goethe. So little does Emerson lend himself to the idle vanity of seeking all the treasures of wisdom in his own head, or neglecting ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... it is amusing to compare The Prince and the Discourses with the Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celebrity than any political writer of modern Europe. Something he doubtless owes to his merit, but much more to his fortune. He had the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... In the Gent. Mag. for 1742 (p. 660) it is stated that 'the King of Prussia has forbid the use of torture in his dominions.' In 1747 (p. 298) we read that Dr. Blackwell, an English physician, had been put to the torture in Sweden. Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois, vi. 17, published in 1748, writing of 'la question ou torture centre les criminels,' says:—'Nous voyons aujourd'hui une nation tres-bien policee [la nation anglaise] la rejeter sans inconvenient. Elle n'est donc pas necessaire par sa nature.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... became the object of study to the politician, and of love to the philanthropist. Its literature too, in two branches, viz. political inquiry, and, towards the middle of the century, romance, offered subjects for imitation. Montesquieu studied the former; Rousseau and Diderot the latter. But England furnished also a series of fearless inquirers on the subject of religion, whose works became the subject of study and of translation.(514) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... one might take patience, but I read and re-read backwards and forwards everything I possess, or can find—reviews, magazines, a volume of Humboldt, even an odd volume of the "Barber of Paris"—"Turkish Letters," purporting to be the translation of a continuation of the Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes," and in which the hero, disguised as a gardener, brings the Visier's daughter a bouquet, which she condescendingly receives, lying in bed a l'Espagnole! I am now reduced to a very serious Spanish work on the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca |
