193 Quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.

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.

Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

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.

Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.