Tag: Quote of the Day

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

Charles de Montesquieu

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.

Charles de Montesquieu

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude…we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

Charles de Montesquieu

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search everywhere for shreds of other men’s works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Charles de Montesquieu

Editor’s note: Sacre bleu, he means me!

(photog)

And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool.

Charles de Montesquieu

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Charles 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.

Charles de Montesquieu

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

Charles de Montesquieu

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Charles de Montesquieu

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Charles de Montesquieu