 Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free. |
| Laws undertake to punish only overt acts. |
| To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them. |
| 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. |
| Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies. |
| An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. |
| The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions. |
| We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death. |
| Peace is a natural effect of trade. |
| No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ. |
| The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. |
| I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve. |
| What orators lack in depth they make up for in length. |
| The less men think, the more they talk. |
| Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight. |
| Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed. |
