I have had Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) standing on my shelves for decades. But for some reason I never got around to reading them. Now that, in an idle hour, I did pick them up, they came like a revelation with something amusing, or different, or simply true, to say, on almost every page.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book, it consists of a series of imaginary letters exchanged between Uzbek, a wealthy Persian exile living in Paris; some of his companions and friends; and his wives and the eunuchs who guard them in the seraglio back home in Isfahan.

I quote.

L. 38. “It is a great problem for men to decide whether it is more advantageous to allow women their freedom, or to deprive them of it. It seems to me that there is a great deal to be said both for and against. If the Europeans say that it is ungenerous to make those we love unhappy, our Asians retort that it is ignoble for men to renounce the authority (empire) that nature gave them over women. If they are told that having a large number of women shut in will cause difficulties, they reply that ten women who obey cause les difficulty than one who does not.”

L. 58. “Paris… is a town of many trades. Here a man will obligingly come and, for a little money, present you with the secret of making gold.

Another will promise to let you sleep with an aerial spirit, provided that you spend thirty years without seeing a woman.

You will also find soothsayers who are so proficient that they will tell you the whole of your life, provided that they have had a quarter of an hour’s conversations with your servants.

There are clever women with whom virginity is a flower which perishes and is reborn once a day, and which, on being plucked for the hundredth time, gives more pain than on the first occasion.

There are others with the powers to repair all the damage done by time, who know how to rescue a beautiful face on the brink of ruin, and even how to recall a woman from the pinnacle of old age and bring her down again to the tenderness of youth,”

L. 66. “The majority of Frenchmen have a mania for being clever, and the majority of those who want to be clever have a mania for writing books.

Yet no plan could be worse. Nature, in her wisdom, seems to have arranged it so that men’s stupidities should be ephemeral, and books make them immortal. A fool ought to be content with having exasperated everyone around him, but he insists on tormenting future generations; he wants his foolishness to overcome the oblivion which he might have enjoyed like a tomb; he wants posterity to be informed that he existed, and to be aware forever that he was a fool.

Of all writers, there are none whom I despise more than anthologists, who search on all sides for scraps out of other people’s works, which they cram into their own like slabs of turf into a lawn. They are no better than compositors arranging letters so that in combination they will form a book for which they have done nothing but provide the use of their hands.”

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In its present state, this branch of law is a science which explains to kings how far they can violate justice without damaging their own interests. What a dreadful idea… to systematize injustice in order to harden their consciences, and turn it into sets of rules, laying down principles and deducing what follows from them!

L. 110. “The part a pretty woman has to play is much more serious than people think. Nothing is of grater gravity than the morning’s events at her dressing table, amidst her servants; an army commander would not devote more attention to positioning his right wing or his reserve troops than she to the placing of a beauty spot which could fail, though she hopes and anticipates that it will be successful.”

L. 122. “Gentle methods of government have a wonderful effect on the propagation of the species. Evidence for this comes constantly from all the republics, especially Switzerland and Holland, which are the worst countries Europe if the nature of their terrain is considered, and which are nonetheless the most populous.

Nothing encourages immigration more than freedom, together with prosperity, which always accompanies it; the former is desirable in itself, and our needs take us to countries where the latter is to be found. The species multiplies in a land where affluence provides enough for children to live on without reducing the quantity available for their parents.

Equality between cities, which usually produces an equal distribution of wealth, itself conveys life and prosperity throughout the nation, diffusing them everywhere.”

L.129. “It is true that by an oddity that is due rather to human nature than to the human mind, it is sometimes necessary to change certain laws. But this situation is uncommon, and when it occurs they should be amended only in fear and trembling. There should be so much solemnity about it, and so many precautions should be taken, that the people should naturally conclude that laws are deeply sacred, since so many formalities are required in order to repeal them.”

L. 130. “I am going to devote this letter to a certain race known as newsmongers, who meet in a magnificent garden where they have nothing to do but are always busy. They are entirely useless to the state, and what they have been saying for fitty years has had as much effect as if they had kept silent for the same length of time. Yet they believe themselves to be important, since they discuss lofty policies and deal in mighty interests of state.

The basis of their conversations is a petty and absurd inquisitiveness. No cabinet secrets are so well kept that they do not claim to have discovered them. They cannot accept the idea that anything is unknown to them; they know how many wives our august sultan has and how many children he fathers each year; they spend nothing on espionage, but they are informed of the measures he takes to humiliate the Turkish and Mogul emperors.

They have scarcely finished with the present before plunging into the future. They go to meet Providence and give it advance notice of everything that mankind is to do. They will lead a general along step by step, an, having praised him for thousands of stupid actions that he did not do, they supply him with thousands more that he will not do either.

They make armies fly through the air, like flocks of cranes, and fortified walls fall down like cards They have bridges on every river, secret passes across every mountain vast depots in the burning deserts; all they lack is sense.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.