Baron De Montesquieu

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

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

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

Love 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.

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

If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

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

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

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.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

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

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.

The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.

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

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

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