Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Time, Perseverance, Success, Endurance, Resolve, Time Management
Those who have but little business to attend to, are great talkers. The less men think, the more they talk.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Conversation, Talking
I have ever held it a maxim, never to do through another what it was possible for me to do myself.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Self-reliance
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of the state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state
—Montesquieu
Topics: Government
Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it
—Montesquieu
Topics: Talent
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
—Montesquieu
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Success, Simplicity
The love of democracy is that of equality.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Democracy
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Law, Lawyers
In the state of nature…all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Equality
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Dying, Death
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers.—The less men think the more they talk.
—Montesquieu
Imperfect enjoyment is attended with regret; a surfeit of pleasure with disgust. There is a certain nick of time, a certain medium to be observed, with which few people are acquainted.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Enjoyment
Man is a social animal, formed to please and enjoy in society.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Society
There are bad examples that are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Example
Passions makes us feel, but never see clearly.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Passion
The morality of the gospel is the noblest gift ever bestowed by God on man.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Morality
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
—Montesquieu
But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Authority
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Greatness
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Experience
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.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Happiness
Some men will believe nothing but what they can comprehend; and there are but few things that such are able to comprehend.
—Montesquieu
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing
When the savages wish to have fruit they cut down the tree and gather it.—That is exactly a despotic government.
—Montesquieu
I never listen to calumnies; because, if they are untrue, I run the risk of being deceived; and if they are true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
—Montesquieu
Nature is just toward men. It recompenses them for their sufferings; it renders them laborious, because to the greatest toils it attaches the greatest rewards.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Labor
Virtue I love, without austerity; pleasure, without effeminacy; and life, without fearing its end.
—Montesquieu
Topics: Virtue
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand French Writer, Statesman
- Jean le Rond d’Alembert French Mathematician
- Denis Diderot French Philosopher, Writer
- Friedrich Schleiermacher German Theologian
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
- Voltaire French Philosopher, Author
- Alexis de Tocqueville French Historian, Political Scientist
- Immanuel Kant Prussian German Philosopher
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German Philosopher, Mathematician
- Pierre Bayle French Philosopher
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