Quotes By Charles De Montesquieu

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.

The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

The less men think, the more they talk.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.