Quotes By Charles De Montesquieu

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

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.

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

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

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

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

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.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

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.

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.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

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.

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

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.

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.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

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

The less men think, the more they talk.

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

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