Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEULove of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
BARON 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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Very good laws may be ill timed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU