WIST Quotations

Montesquieu -- Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 4, ch. 5 (4.5) (1748) [tr. Nugent (1750)]

Dave — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:43:07 +0000

It is not the young people that degenerate: they are not spoilt till those of maturer age are already sunk into corruption.

[Ce n’est point le peuple naissant qui dégénere ; il ne se perd que lorsque les hommes faits sont déja corrompus.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 4, ch. 5 (4.5) (1748) [tr. Nugent (1750)]
(Source)

On society's need to educate the young into a love for the republic.

(Source (French)). Other translations:

It is not young people who degenerate; they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.
[tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]

It is not the rising people that degenerates ; it only declines when the fully-formed men are already corrupted.
[tr. Stewart (2018)]

Twain, Mark -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Preface (1876)

Dave — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:14:45 +0000

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Preface (1876)

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1888-09), “A Letter to a Young Gentleman who Proposes to Embrace the Career of Art,” Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3

Dave — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 12:15:08 +0000

To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. These two unknowns the young man brings together again and again, now in the airiest touch, now with a bitter hug; now with exquisite pleasure, now with cutting pain; but never with indifference, to which he is a total stranger, and never with that near kinsman of indifference, contentment.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1888-09), “A Letter to a Young Gentleman who Proposes to Embrace the Career of Art,” Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3
(Source)

Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 10 (1892).