Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.
What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.
There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.
I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself
Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
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.
Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
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.
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
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.
That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.