Montesquieu

“ We imagine that there is no more difference between the administration of the revenues of a prince and the fortune of a private person, than there is between counting a hundred thousand tomans and counting only a hundred; but the matter is very much more delicate and mysterious. It requires the greatest geniuses to work night and day, inventing endless new schemes with all the pains of travail; they must listen to the advice of a multitude of people, who, unasked, meddle in their affairs; they have to retire and live shut up in closets inaccessible to the great, and worshipped by the small ”

“ What unexpected fortunes, incredible even to those who made them! God creates men out of nothing with no greater expedition. How many valets are now waited on by their fellows, and may tomorrow be served by their former masters! ”

“ Lacqueys, who made their fortune in the last reign, brag to-day of their birth: they avenge themselves upon those who have just doffed their livery in a certain street,3 for all the contempt poured out upon themselves six months before; they cry with all their might, “The nobility is ruined! ”