Quotes By Charles De Montesquieu

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

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

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.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

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

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.