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Montesquieu

noun
1.
French political philosopher who advocated the separation of executive and legislative and judicial powers (1689-1755).  Synonyms: Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat.






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"Montesquieu" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... one House of Parliament, the worst species of ostracism, might be excluded from the public councils, cut off and proscribed from the rights of every subject of the realm, not for a term of years alone, but forever. He quoted from "L'Esprit des Lois" an assertion of Montesquieu, that "one of the excellences of the English constitution was, that the judicial power was separated from the legislative, and that there would be no liberty if they were blended together; the power over the life and liberty of the citizens would then be arbitrary, for the judge would be ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... Hume's reputation stood far higher than in Britain; several of his works had been translated; he had exchanged letters with Montesquieu and with Helvetius; Rousseau had appealed to him; and the charming Madame de Boufflers had drawn him into a correspondence, marked by almost passionate enthusiasm on her part, and as fair an imitation of enthusiasm as Hume was capable of, on ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... had entered the War on the other side. To say that the idea of this small Albania, with corresponding compensations to the Serbs and Greeks, was held out as a bribe to the Bulgars does not seem to me a very wise remark. However, "ne croyez pas le pere Bonnet," said Montesquieu, "lorsqu'il dit du mal de moi, ni moi-meme lorsque je dis du mal du pere Bonnet, parce que nous nous sommes brouilles." Let the reader trust in nothing but the facts, and I hope that those which I present are not an ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... writers, notably 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 ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... accidents with us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of weapon. Our army 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... not so much because they promote vice, as because they promote (or are supposed to promote) free thought; who see that religion (no matter of what quality) is a most valuable assistant to the duties of a minister of police. They will quote in their own behalf Montesquieu's opinion that religion is a column necessary to sustain the social edifice; they will quote, too, that sound and true saying of De Tocqueville's: {1} "If the first American who might be met, either in his own country, or abroad, were to be stopped and asked whether he considered religion useful ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... effect. In the 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 includes 115,000 volumes; in the gallery ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... "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

... 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 line. With the superstition natural ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... doubtful whether this question could be answered to-day in quite the same fashion as formerly. It would surely have been highly dangerous to confide the destinies of the species to Plato or Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, or Montesquieu. At the very worst moments of the French Revolution the fate of the people was in the hands of philosophers of none too mean an order. It cannot be denied, however, that in our time the habits of the thinker have undergone a great change. He has ceased to be speculative or Utopian; ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, or follow up the thread of any argument. In the hurry of conversation their ideas are somehow huddled into sense; but in the intervals of thought, leave a great gap between. Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it: yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Horne Tooke, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... 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

... "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 ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... in this connection to note how Montesquieu, in his "Spirit of Laws," treats this color argument with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... this sovereign hope. Is it reason and opinion, or some innate character which governs the actions of men? The philosophers of hope answer "opinion," for opinion can be indefinitely changed and led from prejudice to science. Is it climate (as Montesquieu had urged) or political institutions which differentiate the races of men? Clearly it is institutions, for if it were climate there would be nothing to hope from reform. Burke opposed to all their schemes of construction and destruction, to their generalisations and philosophisings, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... visit David Garrick; but he disliked England very thoroughly and was glad to get back to Paris. The events of his life in so far as there were any, were his relations with people. He knew intimately practically all the great men of his century, except Montesquieu and Voltaire, who were off the stage before his day. [15:19] Holbach's most intimate and life-long friend among the great figures of the century was Diderot, of whom Rousseau said, " la distance ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, was born near Bordeaux, in France, Jan. 18, 1689. For ten years he was president of the Bordeaux court of justice, but it was the philosophy of laws that interested him rather than the administration of them. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... influence on the now living mind. Most of those French lights of the then firmament are gone out. Forgotten altogether; or recognized, like Rollin and others, for polished dullards, university big-wigs, and long-winded commonplace persons, deserving nothing but oblivion. To Montesquieu,—not yet called "Baron de Montesquieu" with ESPRIT DES LOIS, but "M. de Secondat" with (Anonymous) LETTRES PERSANES, and already known to the world for a person of sharp audacious eyesight,—it does not appear that Friedrich addressed any Letter, now or afterwards. No notice ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... confided to her one morning that there were two book-cases in Cesar's room, which enclosed an alcove,—an architectural surprise to her father. Cesarine flung all her girlish savings upon the counter of a bookseller's shop, and obtained in return, Bossuet, Racine, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Moliere, Buffon, Fenelon, Delille, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, La Fontaine, Corneille, Pascal, La Harpe,—in short, the whole array of matter-of-course libraries to be found everywhere and which assuredly her father would never ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... Grant) that of Cape Richelieu. Portland Bay, also named by Grant, became Tourville Bay; Montaigne Cape took the place-name of Cape Solicitor; Lady Julia Island became Fourcroy Island; Lawrence's Island, Dragon Island; and Cape Bridgewater, Cape Montesquieu. In this manner nearly the whole of Grant's discoveries were rechristened.* (* Some writers give the French name of Cape Desaix, bestowed in honour of one of Napoleon's famous generals, to Cape Albany Otway. Pinkerton's translator of the History ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... was born there; there the people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to be, thanks to Louis XIV. and Fenelon, at once the palace of despotism and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the institutions, and analysed the laws of all people. By classing governments, he had compared them, by comparing he passed judgment on them; and this judgment brought out, in its bold relief, and contrast, on every page, right and force, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... by Voltaire. His 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. In the second half of the eighteenth century the intellectual movement ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Montesquieu-Avantes Cave, about six miles from Saint-Girons, have brought to light a hearth covered over with a layer of stalagmite; numerous fragments of human bones, crania, femora, tibiae, humeri, and radii were found in this layer, and in that of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... crop. Self-preservation, therefore, the rule of nature, seems to be the best rule 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 ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... the interests of commerce, and France, which was fettered by edicts and treaties. To have changed them for the modern maxims of toleration, how reasonable soever, would have been deemed a very bold and dangerous enterprise. It is a principle advanced by President Montesquieu, that where the magistrate, is satisfied with the established religion, he ought to repress the first attempts towards innovation, and only grant a toleration to sects that are diffused and established. See L'Esprit des Loix, liv. 25, chap. 10. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... story, '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 ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book—'C'est de l'esprit sur les lois'—is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... a truly Christian people is, for then there will be no other left; and the superiority of principles, of strength of mind, energy of character, naturally fostered by deep religious convictions, will afford another proof of Montesquieu's reflection, that "the Christian faith, which seems to have for its object only the future life, is likewise the best calculated to make people happy and prosperous ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... 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 ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... thought—the conviction of the dignity and worth of the individual. This thought was the keynote of the Reformation. The Enlightenment, with its appeal to reason, as alike in all men, gave support to the idea of equality. Descartes claimed it as the philosophical basis of man's nature. Rousseau and Montesquieu were among its most valiant champions. Kant made it the point of departure for the enforcement of human right and duty. Fichte but elaborated Kant's view when he contended for 'the equality of everything ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... Carlyle saw to exist between the poetry of a nation and its history; the connection which inevitably follows from the fact that both one and the other are the expression of its character. This is a vein of thought that was first struck by Vico and by Montesquieu; but it was left for the German philosophers, in particular Fichte and Hegel, to see its full significance; and Carlyle was the earliest writer in this country to make it his own. It is manifest that the connection between the literature and the history ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Cap Desaix (Otway), Cap Montaigne (Nelson), Cap Volney (Moonlight Head), and so many other features of the coast? It is singular that while they named some capes that do not exist—as, for instance, Cap Montesquieu, to which there is no name on modern maps to correspond, and no projection from the coast to which it can be applicable—they left nameless these sharp and prominent tongues of rock which form the gateway of Port Phillip. But ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... of the husband ought not to be noticed or made subject to the same animadversions as that of the wife, because it is not evidence of such entire depravity nor equally injurious in its effects upon the morals, good order, and happiness of the domestic life. Montesquieu, Pothier, and Dr. Taylor all insist that the cases of husband and wife ought to be distinguished, and that the violation of the marriage vow, on the part of the wife, is the most mischievous, and the prosecution ought ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... 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

... by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. Virgil worked eleven years on the AEneid. The note-books of great men like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was twenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis," yet you can read it in sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations." A rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... fine manner is not the invariable outcome of noble feeling; and while no man at court had a nobler air than Racine, Corneille looked very much like a cattle-dealer, and Descartes might have been taken for an honest Dutch merchant; and visitors to La Brede, meeting Montesquieu in a cotton nightcap, carrying a rake over his shoulder, mistook him for a gardener. A knowledge of the world, when it is not sucked in with mother's milk and part of the inheritance of descent, is only acquired by education, supplemented by certain gifts of chance—a graceful figure, distinction ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... 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 ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... writer," 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 ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and, as there are here a few more men of wit and noblemen than in Prussia, it would require that I should have a very large table to assemble them all at it." And then he reckoned upon his fingers, Maupertuis, Fontenelle, La Mothe, Voltaire, Piron, Destouches, Montesquieu, the Cardinal Polignac. "Your Majesty forgets," said some one, "D'Alembert and Clairaut." "And Crebillon," said he. "And la Chaussee, and the younger Crebillon," said some one. "He ought to be more agreeable than ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... my friend Guizot. Like his oracle, the sage Montesquieu, he thought, 'Who assembles the people causes them to revolt.' He took fright at the manifesto, as he was pleased to dignify the simple programme in this morning's 'National,' and so, early in the sitting, it was announced that the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... increase and multiply: the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are added to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us."[4] Among other false reflections, the baron of Montesquieu, an author too much admired by many, writes:[5] "It is hardly possible that Christianity should ever be established in China. Vows of virginity, the assembling of women in the churches, their necessary intercourse with the ministers of religion, their participation of the sacraments, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... thirty-first year, possesses similar attributes, aggrandized, or improved. A great work, involving an inquiry into the first principles of government, and, therefore, of infinite practical utility in the career reserved for him, it wants too obviously the elevation of a Montesquieu, the philosophy of a Bolingbroke, or the comprehensive profundity of a Burke. It is a work of genius, but by a partisan, an advocate, a man of powerful emotion and vivid conception, having a strong will, a high purpose, and an enduring conviction. With a great, sometimes an inapt parade of erudition, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... 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 of the time Guicciardini ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... ill-administered government, let the revolt of a part of North Carolina, the memory of insurrection in Pennsylvania, and actual insurrection in Massachusetts, declare it.' An unique distinction of this political treatise is that while Pericles, Cato, Hume, Montesquieu, Junius, and other classical and modern authorities are cited with scholarly tact, the most practical arguments drawn from the facts of the hour and the needs of the people, are conveyed in language the most lucid and impressive. To give a complete analysis of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • 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

... Majesty's 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 (1748). It is necessary, however, to study the internal feuds of the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... Lumignon," said Stidmann, "you remind me of the publisher before the Revolution who said—'If only I could keep Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau very poor in my backshed, and lock up their breeches in a cupboard, what a lot of nice little books they would write to make my fortune.'—If works of art could be hammered out like nails, workmen would make them.—Give ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... vicious, it is easy 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 island of Formosa, where there are ten women born ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... must borrow, and nobody will lend 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 of recovering ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... two distinguished visitors from the French army came to see him, the Marquis de Chastellux, who wrote a book of "Travels in North America," and the Baron de Montesquieu; and he gave a dinner for them to which he invited Governor Trumbull. In the marquis's book we can read a description of it and of Governor Trumbull as he appeared to these French ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... 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." Rome fell as soon as all the nations ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Dubos, who, with less genius than his successor Montesquieu, has asserted and magnified the influence of climate, objects to himself the degeneracy of the Romans and Batavians. To the first of these examples he replies, 1. That the change is less real than apparent, and that ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... principles are exactly alike, they only differ in their mode of expression. Their methods are also 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 ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he deduces from his unfounded premises a series of inconsequent conclusions, which he regards as authoritative and universally applicable. At times he becomes less rigid, as when (under the influence of Montesquieu) he studies the relations between the physical constitution of a nation, its territory, its customs, its form of government, and its deep-rooted opinions, or avows that there has been too much dispute about the forms ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... were changed, or the 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... "Liberty," wrote Lucanus, "is the German's birthright." And Florus, speaking of liberty, said: "It is a privilege which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all of their arts, knew not how to obtain." At a later period Montesquieu was led to exclaim: "Liberty, that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild forests of Germany." While Hume, viewing the results of this discovery, said: "If our part of the world maintains sentiments of liberty, honor, equity, and valor superior to the rest of mankind, it owes these advantages ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... 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 ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... however," (proceeds 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 will ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... he was able to enter the Seminary in the Rue Montesquieu as a free scholar. He now served at Mass. Having a good ear for music,he became a chorister, and sang the Tantum ergo. He was a diligent boy, and so far everything prospered well with him. He even received a prize. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... those doctrines which a man learns in his early youth seem to him so completely certain as to deserve to be pushed nearly to their last conclusions. The Frenchman of the reign of Louis XV. listened eagerly to Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Their descendants, in the time of his grandson, first attempted to apply the ideas of those teachers. While I shall endeavor in this book to deal with social and political conditions existing in the reign of Louis XVI., I shall ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... 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 ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... 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 ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... seasons of despondency." Jean Paul Richter speaks of it as a vital help in "the deepest floods of adversity." The French translator Pierron says that it exalted his soul into a serene region, above all petty cares and rivalries. Montesquieu declares, in speaking of Marcus Aurelius, "He produces such an effect upon our minds that we think better of ourselves, because he inspires us with a better opinion of mankind." The great German historian Niebuhr says of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • 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 stuck so close by that office, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... Masses of records had already been accumulated by antiquaries who had constructed rather annals than history, in which the series of events was given without much effort to arrange them in literary form or trace the causal connection. In France, however, Montesquieu had definitely established the importance of applying the historical method to political problems; and Voltaire had published some of his brilliant surveys which attempt to deal with the social characteristics as well as the mere records of battles and conquests. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... 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 ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... been waiting, 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, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... The boy 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... Constitutional Law is supplied by the doctrine of the Separation of Powers. The notion of three distinct functions of government approximating what we today term the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, is set forth in Aristotle's Politics,[29] but it was the celebrated Montesquieu who, by joining the idea to the notion of a "mixed constitution" of "checks and balances", in Book XI of his Spirit of the Laws, brought Aristotle's discovery to the service of the rising libertarianism of the eighteenth century. It was Montesquieu's fundamental contention that ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... 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 supported by arguments. To the mere head every historical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... 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 made possible the later transformation of the Presidency ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... being both from 'discerno,' they signify the power of so seeing things that in the seeing we distinguish and separate them one from another. [Footnote: L'esprit consiste a connaitre la ressemblance des choses diverses, et la difference des choses semblables (Montesquieu). Saint-Evremond says of a reunion of the Precieuses at the Hotel Rambouillet, with a raillery which is not meant to be disrespectful— 'La se font distinguer les fiertes des rigueurs, Les dedains des mepris, les tourments des langueurs; On y sait demeler la crainte et les ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... centuries from Ignatius to Bossuet, what eminent Christian ever denounced Slavery as wicked? Even the Christian jurisprudists of the eighteenth century defended negro slavery, which it was reserved for the sceptical Montesquieu and the arch-heretic Voltaire to condemn. Montesquieu's ironical chapter on the subject is worthy of Molliere, and Voltaire's is an honor to humanity. He called Slavery "the degrada of the species"; and, in answer to Puffendorff, who claimed that slavery ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was called L'Esprit sur les Lois. M. Renan's Histoire d'Israel may almost be called skittish. The French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a digression, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... and constitutional treatises bearing on history, e.g., Bryce's American Commonwealth; Ostrogorski's Democracy and The Party System; Montesquieu's ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis

... without an introduction. You might write with the pen of the angel Gabriel, or turn out leaders which were a judicious mean between Gladstone, Burke, and Herbert Spencer, and it would profit you nothing, for the simple reason that he hasn't got the time to read them. He would toss Junius and Montesquieu into the waste paper basket, and accept copy on the shocking murder in the Borough Road from one of his regular contributors instead. He can't help himself: and what you must do, Ernest, is to become one of the regular ring, and combine to keep ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... 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 the 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 it has cost me so much labour that ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... little, with large generic strokes,—if we had the means;—such details belonging to the Prussian Antiquary, rather than to the English Historian of Friedrich in our day. A happy Ten Years of time. Perhaps the time for Montesquieu's aphorism, 'Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History-Books!' The Prussian Antiquary, had he once got any image formed to himself of Friedrich, and of Friedrich's History in its human lineaments and organic ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... Montesquieu owes his colossal reputation chiefly to his Esprit des Loix; but the Grandeur et Decadence des Romains is by much the greater work. It has never attained nearly the reputation in this country which it deserves, either in consequence of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... and 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest gentleman!'" "Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final completion,—a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... still belonged to royalty, but in 1730 it was sold to M. Dupin, who, with his wife, enriched and repaired the fabric. They gathered around them a company so famous as to be memorable in the annals of art and literature. This is best shown by the citing of such names as Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Buffon, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, all of whom were frequenters of the establishment, the latter being charged with the education of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which half an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot had the same ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... 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 of their charms ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... family a beloved father, we are striving by every honest means in our power to collect the sum necessary for his ransom, and we are not ashamed to employ ourselves for such a purpose in the occupation of watermen." M. de Montesquieu was struck with this account, and on his departure made them a handsome present. Some months afterwards, the young men being at work in their shop, were greatly surprised at the sudden arrival of their father, who threw himself into their arms; exclaiming at the same time, that he feared ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... Think how many families 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 agent in ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... 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. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... 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 la ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... without providing for each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment,—whilst he, 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... torture? I think not.' 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

... tric-trac. At four o'clock the King took a little repose, the Princesses round him, each with a book . . . . When the King woke the conversation was resumed, and I gave writing lessons to his son, taking the copies, according to his instructions, from the works of, Montesquieu and other celebrated authors. After the lesson I took the young Prince into Madame Elisabeth's room, where we played at ball, and battledore and shuttlecock. In the evening the family sat round a table, while the Queen read to them from books of history, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... 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 laws ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles." Petit lectured on astronomy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and ladies of fashion, as well as professional students.[68] The popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu, Alembert, Diderot, and ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... oppressed. It thus 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) Voltaire spent ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... 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 were engaged than in Massachusetts, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... altogether unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Constitution for a season, he would have known how to veil the statue of Liberty, [Footnote: "Il y a des cas ou il faut mettre pour un moment un voile sur la Liberte, comme l'on cache les statues des dieux."—MONTESQUIEU, liv. xii. chap. 20.] without leaving like his rival, such marks of mutilation on its limbs. But it is to be recollected that he would have had to encounter, in his own ranks, the very same patrician alarm, which could even to Mr. Pitt give an increase of momentum against liberty, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... notwithstanding, entrusted by every government under which he lived with the most important secrets, the most serious negotiations—sent abroad to stay revolutions, summoned home to remodel constitutions, and consulted on every point as though he had spent his whole life in the study of Montesquieu or Colbert. Such was the moral life of the man pronounced the premier gentilhomme de France by the fathers and grandfathers of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... history gives us concerning all nations, bear testimony to these 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 and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... successes that study has recently achieved, are due, in great part, to the illustrious representatives of the historical school. We may add, here, that the French historical school, which has so worthily inherited the spirit of Montesquieu, has not achieved less in this direction than the older German school. It has reconciled the opposing but not mutually hostile, tendencies of Savigny and Thibaut. It has conscientiously scrutinized facts to show their concatenation, and to allow their meaning and bearing to be clearly grasped. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... guards of law; Mutual aversion between the oppressor 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; Wilberforce; Whitbread; Characters. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... 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 Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... man, born 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 ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... 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 of Economists, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... given purpose could dictate. In pondering such difficulties as still remain in those laws, we may remember the answer of Solon to the question, whether he had given the Athenians the best laws; viz. that he had given them the best of which they were capable: or the judgment of the illustrious Montesquieu, who remarks, 'When Divine Wisdom said to the Jews, "I have given you precepts which are not good," this signifies that they had only a relative goodness: and this is the sponge which wipes out all the difficulties which are to be found in the laws of Moses.' This is a truth ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley

... freedom of thought in religion, constitutional liberty, and the abolition of privilege of all kinds. They speculated as to the origins of political and social institutions and the laws of human progress. The works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu were eagerly studied by the nobles and fine ladies of the court with whom philosophisme was fashionable. America they regarded as a land of freedom and primitive simplicity; and they hailed the crude assertions of the Declaration of Independence, issued by a body largely composed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... ball, with her Parisian graces grafted on to her pretension to the manners of the vieille Cour, to enjoy, even now, a hearty laugh at her vanity in supposing that it was in her power to supersede and triumph over a Montesquieu. "As it may seem extraordinary that people in the position of the V.s should have admitted English prisoners en pension, I ought to mention that it was entirely a galanterie on the part of Monsieur. He stipulated it should be no expense to him, excepting in the ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... respect 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 good luck ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, Crebillon, Lombardini, Thomas ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... France, excerpts from Montesquieu, Diderot and Rousseau are still read in the schools, but outside of France, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... of being regarded as models for all succeeding ages. The learned Michaelis, who was professor of law in the University of Gottingen, says that a man who considers laws philosophically, who would survey them with the eye of a Montesquieu, would never ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... of the eighteenth 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... no chapter on sneezes in "Tristam Shandy." The faithful Boswell has recorded no sneeze of Dr. Johnson. Spinoza does not reckon it among the things the citizen may do without offense to a free state. Montesquieu does not give the Spirit of Sneezing, nor tell how the ancients sneezed. Pascal, in all his vanities of man, has no thought on sneezing. Bacon has missed it. Of all the glorious company of Shakespeare's brain, a few snored, but not one sneezed or spoke of sneezing. Darwin avoids it. Hegel ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern



Words linked to "Montesquieu" :   philosopher, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu



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