Charles de Montesquieu Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Charles de Montesquieu Quotes and Sayings
- 1
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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- 2
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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- 3
Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
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- 4
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.
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- 5
Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
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- 6
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
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- 7
I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
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- 8
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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- 9
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.
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- 10
In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
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- 11
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
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- 12
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
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- 13
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
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- 14
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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- 15
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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- 16
Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
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- 17
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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- 18
Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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- 19
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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- 20
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
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- 21
Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
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- 22
Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
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- 23
The less men think, the more they talk.
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- 24
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
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- 25
The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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- 26
The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
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- 27
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
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- 28
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.
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- 29
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
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- 30
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
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- 31
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.
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- 32
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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- 33
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
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- 34
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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- 35
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
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- 36
What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
Charles de Montesquieu | Refcard PDF ↑
