Charles de Montesquieu

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

The less men think, the more they talk.

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

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

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

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