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When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

Baron de Montesquieu

Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Coffee People Wise
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Children Holy Imputed Instruct Perform
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
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Crime People Progress
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Different States War
Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Certain Foolishness Kind
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
Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Republic Virtue
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
Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Honor Thinking
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Philosophical Two Sides
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

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

Checks Power Should
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Brain Guarantees Humans
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Idiot Shields Stupidity
The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Busy English Polite Time

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

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When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

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