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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Glide
Carried
River
Gentle
Rivers
Away
Would
Fain
Torrent

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.
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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.
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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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.
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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Trade is the best cure for prejudice.
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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.
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When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Baron de Montesquieu
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As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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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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Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.
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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.
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
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What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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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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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Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
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I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
Baron de Montesquieu