This word [great] has, at the very least, only a relative meaning. It is impossible to measure it once and for all.
1926
Invention is the sole proof of genius.
1746
To be original, [the writer] is obliged to prepare the ruin of a language whose progress he would have hastened a century earlier.
1746
What does the soul desire more keenly than the truth? [...] Give me a soul that loves, [...] that hungers and thirsts in the solitude of this life, a soul that sighs for the fountain of the eternal homeland, and it will understand what I say.
1263-1264
Portrait of a Woman, Called the Marchesa Durazzo
probably ca. 1622–25
An old proverb says that it is easier to make a buffoon rich than to make him a gentleman.
81 BC
When men depart from the maxims of reason to embrace [...] an artificial life, no one can answer for what will please or displease them.
1751
All is equal, believe me: one often sees more than one king surrounded by sadness.
1736
Love breathes [...] a dormant and covered fire that winter had concealed within our veins.
1546/1563
The Story of Esther
1422
The wicked rule only through the cowardice of those who obey them: it is more just that it be so than otherwise.
c. 253-270 AD
To fear neither men nor gods, to want nothing shameful, nothing excessive, to exercise unlimited sovereignty over oneself.
63-64 AD
[A quick mind] is [...] the torch that illuminates in doubt, [...] the thread of Ariadne with which one can exit a labyrinth of the most entangled affairs.
1636
We are irritated by those who respond with irony when spoken to seriously, for irony is a form of contempt.
329-323 BC
Saint John on Patmos
ca. 1511
It is not difficult [...] to judge that it is not with [the philosophers] that one should settle.
1670
Take away the feeling we have of these qualities [...] and thenceforth all Colors, all Tastes, all Smells, and all Sounds [...] will vanish and cease to exist.
1689
Never [...] will they be prevented from thinking according to their free will. What will follow from this? That men will think one way and speak another.
1670
The will in itself has no goal, because it has no cause.
1819
Marble architectural fragment with palmette from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis
3rd or 2nd century BCE
Which proves that [the critic] somewhat exaggerated the power of his own dialectic.
1746
Everything that is done, or that happens anew, is [...] a Passion with regard to the subject to which it happens, & an Action with regard to the one who makes it happen.
1649
God is the essence of objectified imagination, he is the personification and deification of our imagination [...].
1841
The number [of philosophers] increases through persecution itself. They have only to be wise, and above all to be united, and you can be sure they will triumph.
1758
Bronze situla (pail) attachment in the form of a Silenos head
4th century BCE
In a word, let us distinguish between an art of cultivating sciences and an art of inventing them.
1620
Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production.
1847
[A power] degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power, of which it is only the moderator, and wants to dispense the laws it should only protect.
1762
The difficulty of learning and being instructed; this disposition seems to come from the false opinion that one already knows the truth about the subject in question [...].
1772
Diana
ca. 1760
This feeling, when disinterested, and connecting itself with the pure idea of duty [...] forms the essence of Conscience.
1861
Everything through our sensations and nothing without them, that is our history; and our constant way of elaborating them is to remember as a consequence of feeling, and to will as a consequence of judging.
1817
If the prince's religion becomes the religion of his subjects, the prince's reason will also become the reason of his subjects; and thus the prince's sentiments will always be in fashion.
1674-1675
Those who do not want to defend their homeland should lose, not their life or their liberty, but purely and simply their homeland.
1943
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Angels
1460
Where, in fact, in practice do you hold virtue to be equal and even superior to everything else! Show me a Stoic, if you have one.
c. 108 AD
M. de Montaigne was very keen to avoid retracing his steps.
1774
One is naturally inclined to detest what one fears.
c. 72-126 AD
The disciple of wisdom is as if confused, however blameless he may be, and feels his inadequacy, however advanced he may be.
4th century BC
Venus and the Lute Player
ca. 1565–70
Time is not a line that one can travel over again.
1889
The legislative power can belong only to the collective will of the people.
1797
For a religion and a State to have a long existence, they must often be brought back to their founding principles.
1513-1519
The law of the division of labor applies to organisms as it does to societies; it has even been said that an organism occupies a higher place on the animal scale the more its functions are specialized.
1893
Marble portrait of Livia
ca. 14–37 CE
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
c. 375 BC
It is for want of having considered this important point [the small perceptions] that we have remained almost until now ignorant of what is most beautiful in souls.
1704
The imperative 'become hard!', the fundamental certainty that all creators are hard, this is the true distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.
1888
[...] which proves how democratic the English constitution became over time, even while appearing motionless.
1835-1840
Portrait of a Monk in Prayer
1495