What is this glory that swells your hearts [...]? An echo, a shadow, a dream, the shadow of a dream.
1742
What better could one imagine today?
1765-1769
Combat or death; bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.
1847
Poverty is not shameful in itself, but only where it is proof of laziness, intemperance, prodigality, and folly.
100-120 AD
The Newborn Baby
1675
He would be a very ill-advised God who could find no better amusement than to transform himself into a world such as this!
1851
[...] does the soul have a sex? In truth, I hardly feel one in my own.
1761
The garment of the church is a garment of many colors.
1623
[...] the idea of labor [...] was inextricably linked to the idea of servitude. One does not merely avoid work as a painful effort; one flees it as a dishonor.
1864-1866
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
One must have very little knowledge of the world to believe that a great volubility of tongue is found only as a consequence of good judgment...
1689
Thus all things putrefy, except for fire; earth, water, air putrefy; for all these things are matter and food for fire.
c. 334 BC
A death is considered [...] the easiest, one that inconveniences friends the least and causes them the most regret for the deceased.
4th century BC
It is to be believed that such a figure which astonishes us relates to some other of the same kind, which is unknown to man.
1580
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1815
The love of power and the love of liberty are in an eternal antagonism. Where liberty is less, the passion for power is more ardent and more shameless.
1869
It is not our senses that deceive us, but our will that deceives us through its hasty judgments.
1674-1675
Where, then, are important good and evil to be found in man? There where his superiority lies.
c. 108 AD
It is much easier for [God] to do the works He willed than it is for us to recount them.
1263-1264
Saint Francis
1450s
An ideal is nothing other than the conception of a perfection that has not yet been met with in experience.
1797-1798
The art [...] that no one can mark the limits of your capacity will remain [...] fruitless if you do not add to it the art of hiding the affections of your heart.
1636
Our ideas are subject to error only through the judgments that mix with them; and yet our judgments are in themselves as immune to error as all our other perceptions.
1805
[Certain] words [...] are repugnant to a free and gentle government such as ours; [...] words that must be traced back [...] to the most arrogant and cruel of tyrants.
63 BC
View of Toledo
ca. 1599–1600
No one willingly reverts to the past, unless all his actions have been submitted to the censorship of his conscience [...].
c. 49 AD
As mutual indifference has the effect of relaxing collective surveillance, the sphere of free action for each individual expands in fact, and little by little, the fact becomes a right.
1893
Essentially discontinuous, since it proceeds by juxtaposed words, speech only marks out from a distance the main stages of the movement of thought.
1896
[This book] contains nothing [...] but my assertions put in a bad order and without their true proofs, so that they appear paradoxical.
1643-1649
Terracotta woman
ca. 600–480 BCE
The principle of the need for a sufficient reason for a thing to exist, for an event to happen, for a truth to obtain. Is this a principle that needs proof?
1715-1716
The carriages will always be emblazoned with the arms and crests of the City of Paris, and the coachmen dressed in a blue coat.
1662
April, the honor of the green, yellow, and blue-green meadows [...].
1546/1563
This flight [from evil] is the resemblance to God, as much as it is in our power; and one resembles God through justice, holiness, and wisdom.
c. 253-270 AD
Stone spindle whorl
ca. 2400–1900 BCE
To everything a man lets become visible, one can ask: what does he want to hide? From what does he want to avert his gaze? What prejudice does he want to evoke?
1881
The more progress man makes in scientific and industrial civilization, the more his reason rebels against revealed faith [...].
1841
The man of wit [...] usually perceives in conversation only what is said well, and the mediocre man only what is said ill or ridiculously.
1758
Literature seen in perspective is not quite the same as seen day by day. [...] After a year, a book has acquired a greater or lesser value than it had on the day of its publication.
1926
Bronze statuette of Mercury
1st century CE
Men's maxims reveal their hearts.
1746
[Religion] only makes [the Divinity] more inconceivable; it shows in it only a capricious tyrant, whose fancies are [...] most often harmful to the human species.
1766
Between a crude life and a soft life, I would like to distinguish a simple life, and to define its idea, if possible, with some precision.
1776
Justice is a flight [...] that implies abandonment, that also implies being pushed.
1953
Portrait of a Woman
1778
Most of the souls of the unfortunate mortals [...] complained [...] that they were condemned to this eternal misfortune only for having taken a wife.
1518-1527
Nothing is more charming than that joy which has its origin in devotion, which is a mixture of admiration and love.
1670
It is in these sacred names that the wretched are made: O sovereign powers, you are made guilty for it!
1769
Before doing anything, a true Sage examines the goal and chooses the means. [...] they expose such a precious object for such a minimal and uncertain result. In reality, they do even worse, for the life they expose is more precious.
4th century BC
A Man with the Initials FM
1751