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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

There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

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

Delight Dull Reading
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Delight Hours Philosophical
I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Another Execute Impossible Maxims
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Nature Science
Trade is the best cure for prejudice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cures Prejudice Trade
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Criminals Tests
When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cutting Government Tree
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Philosophical Thinking
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

History People Vacant
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Enough Reason Sophisticated
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Different States War
The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens Men Society
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Talking Thinking
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
The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Powerful Sick

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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