Charles de Montesquieu quotes:

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

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.

Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.

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

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

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

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

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

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

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

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

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

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

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

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

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman...because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

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

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.

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

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.

We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

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.

The less men think, the more they talk.