Montesquieu

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

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

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

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.

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

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

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

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

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

You have to study a great deal to know a little.

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

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

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