Montesquieu/biography

Famous quotes containing the words montesquieu and/or biography:

“The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind—he had been so for such a long time—but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)