Montesquieu

“ HAPPY is he, who estimating at its full value a life of ease and tranquility, makes his own family the centre of his thought, and knows no other land save that in which he was born!
I live in a barbarous country, surrounded by everything that offends me, and absent from all in which I am interested. A sombre melancholy holds me; I am dreadfully depressed: I feel as if I were about to be annihilated; and I only recover myself when some dismal jealousy awakes within me, and brings in its train fear, suspicion, hatred, and regret. ”

“ We are so miserable that we cannot help wishing a change: others in my pace, would desire your death, it will be all the sweeter on that account.' This speech, which should have softened him, sent him off into a paroxysm of anger; he drew his dagger, and plunged it into her breast. 'My dear companions,' said she, with her dying breath, 'if Heaven has compassion on my virtue, you will be avenged.' With these words, she quitted this miserable life, and entered into the abode of bliss, where women who have followed virtue, enjoy a happiness which never palls. ”

“ OF all the nations of the world, my dear Usbek, none has excelled that of the Tartars in the splendour and magnitude of its conquests. This people is the veritable ruler of the earth: all the others seem to be intended for its service; it is alike that founder and the destroyer of empires; in all times, it has afforded the world signs of its prowess; in every age it has been the scourge of the nations. ”

“ Do you believe that the battle will remain dubious until an invisible power comes to decide it? that every blow will be thrown away; all strategy in vain; and all courage useless?
Do you imagine that death, present on such occasions in a thousand forms, cannot produce in the minds of men those wild panics which you have such difficulty in explaining? Will you have it that in an army of a hundred thousand men there may not be a single coward? Do you think that the discouragement of such a one may not produce discouragement in another? ”

“ IN every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative, the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law.
By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and Book XI.
Chap. 6.provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. ”

“ I am never for an instant sure of my master's favour; for each of his wives is an enemy who never ceases to hope for my ruin. They take advantage of certain snatches of time when I cannot be heard, when he can refuse them nothing, and when I am always in the wrong. I conduct to my master's bed women whose spite is roused against me: do you imagine that they will move a finger in my behalf, or say a single word in my favour? I have everything to fear from their tears, their sighs, their embraces, from their very pleasures; it is their time of triumph ”

“ Delighted when we have desires that we cannot gratify, you treat us as if we had no emotions--though you would be very sorry if that were so: you imagine that our long repressed love will be quickened when we behold you. It is very difficult for man to make himself beloved; the easiest plan is to obtain from our constitutional weakness what you dare not hope to obtain through your own merit.
Farewell, my dear Usbek, farewell. Believe that I live only to adore you: the thought of you fills my soul ”

“ On every hand I meet people who talk constantly about themselves; their conversation is a mirror which reflects only their own impertinent faces; they will tell you of the merest trifles that happen to them, and expect the interest they take in them to magnify their importance in your eyes; they have done everything, seen everything, said everything, thought everything; they are a pattern of mankind, a subject of inexhaustible comparisons, a source of precedents which never dries up. ”

“ It is a misfortunate not to be loved, but to have love withdrawn from one is an outrage. You abandon us, Usbek, to wander in barbarous climes. What! Do you count it as nothing to be loved? Alas! You do not even know what it is you lose! The sighs I heave there is none to hear; my falling tears are not by to pity. Your insensibility takes you further and further from the love that throbs for your in your seraglio. Ah! My beloved Usbek, if you only knew your happiness! ”

“ You alone could recompense me for the absence of Rica, and it is only Rica who could console me for yours. We miss you, Usbek; you were the very life of our circle. How hard it is to break away from those attachments in which both the heart and the mind are engaged!
We have great debates here; our talk turns principally on morality. We disputed yesterday whether true happiness consists in pleasure and sensual gratification, or in the practice of virtue.
I have heard you often affirm that men were made to be virtuous, and that justice is as indispensable to existence as life itself. ”

“ I was, however, fortunate enough to escape a dreadful death; but the fair one, whom I had made the witness of my weakness, extorted a heavy price for her silence: I entirely lost command of her, and she forced me, each time at the risk of my life, to comply with a thousand caprices.
At length, the fire of youth burnt out, I grow old and become, in that particular, at peace with myself. Women I regard with indifference, I pay them back for all their contempt, and all the torments which I suffered through them. ”

“ I count every moment as it passes, prolonging them by my impatience; and when the expected moment is about to arrive, a sudden revolution takes place in my heart; my hand trembles to open a letter that may be fatal; the anxiety which caused my despair seems to me the happiest frame of mind in which I could be, and I dread to be forced from it by some stroke more cruel than a thousand deaths. ”

“ They might lay a restraint upon women, make laws to correct their manners, and to limit their luxury: but who knows but that by this means, they might lose that peculiar taste which would be the source of the riches of the nation, and that politeness which would render the country frequented by strangers?
It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius. ”

“ The soul, while united to the body, is a slave under a tyrant. If the blood moves sluggishly, if our spirits are not light enough, or high enough, we fall into dejection, and grow melancholy; but, if we drink what has the power to change the disposition of our body, our soul becomes capable of receiving delightful impressions, and experiences an inward joy as its machine recovers, so to speak, life and motion. ”

“ I was born among the Guebres, whose religion is perhaps the oldest in the world. My misfortunes began, when, at the age of six, love dawned in me before reason, and I could not live without my sister. My eyes were always fixed on her, and if she left me for a moment, she found me, on returning, bathed in tears: each new day added not more to my age than to my love. ”

“ I HAVE met some people to whom virtue was so natural, that they were not even conscious of it; they applied themselves to their duty without any compulsion, and were led to it instinctively; far from making their own admirable qualities a subject of conversation, it seemed as if they were quite ignorant of their existence. Such people I love; not those men who seem to be astonished at their own virtue, and who look upon a good deed as a marvel the relation of which should excite wonder. ”