This is not courage, it is recklessness; courage [...] scorns fatigue and danger for a useful motive, [...] recklessness braves fatigue without reason.
86-82 BC
It is impossible to honor those one despises, nor to willingly obey those one hates and holds in horror.
c. 1552-1553
[...] duration, whose essence is to flow ceaselessly, and to exist, consequently, only for a consciousness and a memory.
1890
Nor is it out of servile fear that the Turks and Russians fight with the ferocity and fury of lions and tigers; one does not thus have courage out of fear.
1764
Bronze statuette of Tyche/Fortuna
ca. 1st century BCE–1st century CE
Obscurity is the kingdom of error.
1747
Those who have received an education recognize the obligation [...] to contribute to the formation of human beings.
1777
I desire neither reputation nor fortune, because these things do not bring happiness.
4th century BC
I would rather see my daughter dead than the wife of a tyrant.
100-120 AD
Agnes Sewell
possibly ca. 1800
The Christian Religion is [...] the support of Society [...]. This is why [...] the Church has spies and forces parents, friends, and servants to inform on each other; which makes [...] the intercourse of life infinitely agreeable.
1768
It is not a new thing [...] to be separated from that of which you were a part. Willingly give up these limbs which are now useless.
63-64 AD
I cannot tire of admiring my work; I am drunk on self-love; I adore myself in what I have made.
1762
Are convents so essential to the constitution of a State? [...] and the human race of so many victims?
1760
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1515
Happiness makes us more arrogant and more unreasonable.
329-323 BC
[...] divine or religious right is founded on a pact, without which there is no other right than natural right [...].
1670
Loyalty, generosity, the shame of a good reputation: these three things united in a single feeling—this is what we call noble, distinguished[...]
1881
The food that would satisfy a dwarf [...] would only whet the appetite of a giant.
1636
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints James Minor and Lucy
1362
Common faith is rekindled quite naturally within the reconstituted collectivity; it is reborn because it finds itself in the very conditions in which it was originally born.
1912
There are two publics: the one on which a journalist can have some influence, and the other, the one that makes serious reputations [...], the one that judges the judges.
1926
The most perfect being is always attached to humanity by a small corner of imperfection.
1896
It is said of you men [...] that your promises are long, and your loyalty is short.
1527
Portrait of a Man in Royal Livery
1532–35
Often what pleases them one day, displeases them the next; whatever efforts they make, it is not in their power to recall their past inclinations [...].
1742
The more often we have had any given perception, the more easily we recall its memory; but also the less this memory strikes and moves us.
1801
We call Good, all that is apt to produce Pleasure, and [...] Evil, what is apt to produce in us Pain.
1689
A dissonance that suddenly resolves into a chord makes the harmony more pleasing.
1623
Marble fragments of a statue of the emperor Caracalla
ca. 217–230 CE
Bentham's dictum, 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one,' might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory commentary.
1861
No one should, for the love of life, resolve to live in servitude.
c. 387 BC
Every true conditional is necessary, and [...] every false conditional is impossible, because [...] the term of the consequent necessarily follows from the term of the antecedent.
c. 1270
It is solely the intoxication produced by the rapidity of technical progress that has given birth to the mad idea that work could one day become superfluous.
1934
Portrait of a Man
1703
The success of the best-organized geniuses depends entirely on the progress of language in the age in which they live.
1746
There is nothing profound and serious in man but holy poverty and renunciation, the fruitful sadness that turns into joy: all the rest is frivolity.
1670
He blindly follows what he believes to be my opinions [...] even though he does not understand them; thus he blindly contradicts them [...].
1643-1649
Light is entirely incorporeal, although it is the act of a body.
c. 253-270 AD
Bronze strainer
5th century BCE
If, like truth, a lie had but one face, we would be on better terms; for we would take as certain the opposite of what the liar said.
1580
Time has, in each century, presented some truths to men; but it still has many gifts left to give us.
1758
It is not in the history of the world [...] that one finds the idea of a plan and a whole realized, but in the life of the individual. Peoples exist only in abstracto: individuals are what is real.
1836
The simplicity of God's ways [...] properly applies to the means, while on the contrary, variety, richness, or abundance applies to the ends or effects.
1686
Sunflowers
1887
[They seemed] to have taken on the task of solving this insoluble problem: namely, to govern by the majority, but against the majority's taste.
1893
Strong imaginations are extremely contagious; they dominate the weak ones; they gradually give them their same turns of thought and imprint their same characters upon them.
1674-1675
[The capitalist] sells not only what has cost him an equivalent, but also what has cost him nothing at all, although it has cost his worker's labor.
1865
You must absolutely and completely be in your soul [...] free or a slave, enlightened or ignorant.
c. 108 AD
Key
1st century CE