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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
River
Gentle
Rivers
Away
Would
Fain
Torrent
Glide
Carried

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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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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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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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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.
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Republics end through luxury monarchies through poverty.
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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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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.
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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
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...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
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I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
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Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
Baron de Montesquieu