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Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

Baron de Montesquieu

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Delight Dull Reading
To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Action Law Lending
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Knowing Long Success
The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Act Law Overt Punish
A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Speak Writing
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Power Should
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Abuse Peace Tendencies
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

Democracies Government Wisdom
Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens May Order
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Example Law Morality
Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Fertility Liberty
Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Democracy Equality Love
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Overt Punish Undertake
There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Civil War Kingdoms War
Law should be like death, which spares no one.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Spare
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Degrees Different Knowing

Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

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Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

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