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The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.

Baron de Montesquieu

When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Government Long Luxury
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

Law Passion Powerful
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Empires Peace War
I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Art History Philosophy
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Idiot Shields Stupidity
Power should be a check on power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Evil Good
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Philosophical Thinking
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

Body Diversity Movement
In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Character Giving Leadership
This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Punishment Remedy Sick
Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Empty Orignal Praise
Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Nature Proportion Rewards
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Disappointment Reading Sovereign
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Real War
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Corruption Degrees Government

The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.

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The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.

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