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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Human
Humans
Counsels
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Precepts
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Laws
Direct
Ought
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An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
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It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself
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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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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.
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu