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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Baron de Montesquieu

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Believe Gratitude People
In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Dresses Matter Should
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Idiot Shields Stupidity
The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Philosophical Spirit
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Learning Littles Study
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Politics Republican
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Animal Men Society
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Machines Passion Ruins
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Relation
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
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Knowing Long Success
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
For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Bankers Country Jobs
Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Despise Fool Law Men
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Hands Heart might
The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Believe Coffee Witty
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
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
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Luxury Republic Tyrants
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Freedom Liberty Missing
The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Divorce Given Moments
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Blind Intelligent World
Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Gunpowder Men Secret
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Brain Guarantees Humans
Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Freedom Wells
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

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

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