I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Baron De MontesquieuRead
With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
Interpretation
Moral truths must resonate emotionally, not just logically.
This quote by Baron De Montesquieu highlights the importance of not only presenting moral truths in a convincing way but also ensuring that they evoke a genuine emotional response. It suggests that for moral ideas to truly resonate and influence behavior, they must be felt deeply on an emotional level, rather than just understood intellectually.
In practice
In a discussion about ethical leadership, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of emotional intelligence.
I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here.
During Lent, let us find concrete ways to overcome our indifference.
Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. . . . Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.
American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.
The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.
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