Lenity is a part of justice; but she must not speak too loud for fear of waking justice.
The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.
Logic is to grammar what the sense of words is to their sound.
Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.
Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective.
Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.
All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.
Of what delights are we deprived by our excesses!
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
There is graciousness and a kind of urbanity in beginning with men by esteem and confidence. It proves, at least, that we have long lived in good company with others and with our selves.
Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.
Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.
If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.
Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.
If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.
Xenophon wrote with a swan’s quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.
A temperate style is alone classical.
Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.