Clairvoyance is a confirmation of the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space, time, and causality.
1836
There is a reality located outside the world, that is, outside of space and time, outside of man's mental universe, outside of the entire domain that human faculties can reach.
1957
One never receives praise for the virtues of the rational part of the soul; and thus, one does not praise someone directly for being wise, nor for being prudent.
4th century BC
Women [...] are the music of life: they know how to accept and assimilate everything [...] frankly and with fewer reservations, to further embellish it with their sympathy.
1896
Red Sunset
1905–8
A prince is only truly strong through the strength of his nation. If it ceases to be respected, the prince ceases to be powerful.
1772
It is not dependent on [our] Will to see as black what appears yellow, nor to persuade oneself that what is currently scalding is cold.
1689
[A being] who only has the idea of duration would not have the idea of time, which is that of a measured duration.
1817
The study of modes of production constitutes [...] the materialist suppression of philosophy.
1841
View in the Stables of the Villa of Maecenas, Tivoli
ca. 1805–10
Cast your eyes over the nations and the times: examine the religious maxims which have been in vogue in the world, you will have difficulty persuading yourself that they are anything other than the dreams of a man in delirium.
1757
If we are unable to hunt the good with one idea, we will hunt it with three: beauty, proportion, and truth.
c. 360 BC
I praise and admire you; but I pity the fate of Greece, seeing that the only advantages that remained to us, knowledge and eloquence, will, through you, pass over to the Romans as well.
100-120 AD
The appearance of Sages causes the appearance of brigands, and the disappearance of Sages causes the disappearance of brigands. Sages and brigands, these two terms are correlative, one calls for the other [...].
4th century BC
View of the Tiber
before 1789
[...] we have an inner feeling that all our perceptions of objects are made in us without us, and even in spite of us [...].
1707
Those in whom the will can most easily conquer the passions [...] undoubtedly have the strongest souls.
1649
The lands disputed [with him] were awarded [...] by the arbitral sentence of the pope.
1753-1754
Where several [centers of power] enjoy liberty, it is not enough for one who wishes to pave a way to empire to seize just one in order to master the others.
1677
Monsieur de Bellefourière
1521
We children of the future, how could we be at home in this today!
1882
Among things, some are good, others bad, and others indifferent. The good are the virtues [...]; the bad are the vices [...]; the indifferent [...] are wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, pain.
c. 108 AD
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation, those who dissent from the opinion even more than those who hold it.
1859
How to prove [...] the communication, or the harmony of two substances as different as the soul and the body.
1696
The Public Garden at Pontoise
1874
We may then say that there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but only as many as there are associations.
1762
A good marriage, if there be any, rejects the company and conditions of love: it tries to represent those of friendship.
1580
It is upon [its] happy return that love breathes [...] a dormant and covered fire that winter concealed within our veins.
1546/1563
This universe is one animal, which contains within itself all animals. There is in it one soul, which spreads throughout all its parts.
c. 253-270 AD
Portrait of a Venetian Senator
ca. 1525
Everyone feels that it [the division of labor] is and is increasingly becoming one of the fundamental bases of the social order.
1893
[Goods] circulate among several nations as they would within a single one; and they are sold in all markets as if they were sold in a single common market.
1776
There is no conversion in the particular negative [...] because a species is said negatively of its genus, as in 'some animal is not a man', but not vice versa.
c. 1270
Live in conformity with nature, that is, preserve yourself in the perfection of your nature.
1797-1798
The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1540
I consider those capable of defending themselves who have enough men and money [...] to give battle to anyone who comes to attack them.
1513
What is there that one cannot find in the knowledge of man?
1746
[One must keep] the spelling with its quirks, [and only modify] the punctuation when the text becomes clearer as a result.
1643-1662
The real origin of a legend [...] doubtless dates back to the obscure times of an autonomous civilization.
1926
Marble grave relief with a funerary banquet and departing warriors
2nd century BCE
The man truly worthy of our homage is [...] he who has risen by his own merit, and who has not founded his greatness on the misfortune and ruin of others.
79 BC
If someone could show me, between complete independence and the total servitude of thought, an intermediate position where I could hope to stand, I might establish myself there; but who will discover this intermediate position?
1835-1840
What idea can one form of a god who punishes millions of men for having been ignorant of secret laws, which he himself only published stealthily [...]?
1766
All the efforts of disbelief were less to be feared than [indiscreet zeal]. Disbelief fights the proofs of Religion; [this zeal] tended to annihilate them.
1745
A Man with the Initials RH
1775
One must trust less in [fortune's] favors; she is a fickle goddess.
circa 68 AD
Another sign of a prosperity nearing its end is its long duration: fortune grows old [...] with the years, as we do.
1636
Before we can philosophize, we must live; and life demands that we put on blinders, that we look neither to the right nor to the left, but straight ahead.
1911
Others skim over everything, and attach themselves only to the bulk of events.
1623
Pendant in the form of a fish
3900 BCE - 100 CE