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

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Abandon
Favors
Longer
Given
May
Life
Favor

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
Baron de Montesquieu
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
Baron de Montesquieu
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
Baron de Montesquieu
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What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
Baron de Montesquieu
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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
Baron de Montesquieu
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Baron de Montesquieu
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As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Solemnity is the shield of idiots
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There are countries where a man is worth nothing there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
Baron de Montesquieu