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

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Charles de Montesquieu

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

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.
Charles de Montesquieu

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

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

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

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
Charles de Montesquieu

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.
Charles de Montesquieu

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

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

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

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

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
Charles de Montesquieu

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
Charles de Montesquieu

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
Charles de Montesquieu

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
Charles de Montesquieu

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

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
Charles de Montesquieu

Peace is a natural effect of trade.
Charles de Montesquieu