Baron de Montesquieu Quotes - Page 7

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

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

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

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

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

Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.

The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.

Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.

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

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.

Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.