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Charles De Montesquieu Quotes


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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

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

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

Peace is a natural effect of trade.