Quotes by Charles Montesquieu

• The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
• The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
• The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
• The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
• The less men think, the more they talk.
• 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.
• Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
• Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
• Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
• There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
• There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
• 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.
• To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
• We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
• What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
• Peace is a natural effect of trade.
• It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
• To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
• I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
• No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
• An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
• Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
• Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
• I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
• If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
• 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 most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
• Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
• It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
• An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
• Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
• Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
• 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.
• Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
• Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
• In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
• If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.
• There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.