Then, it seems, it is a wise endurance which would be courage.
c. 380 BC
[Ignorance] is the opposite of science, & the first disposition to faith. One feels its full importance for the Church.
1768
In the handling of affairs, there are no teachings so good or certain as those given by experience. [...] The experience one gains on oneself teaches more and imprints better.
c. 1552-1553
It rarely happens that those who live off philosophy live for philosophy.
1839
Fragment of a statuette of a woman
4th–3rd centuries BCE
The world laughs, the black curtain is torn, light has united with darkness…
1886
When a certain number of people have agreed [...] to form a community [...], they make up a single political body, in which the majority has the right to decide and to act.
1690
Affairs do not always become more difficult as they become larger [...]. It often even happens that they take on a simpler aspect as their consequences may be more extensive and more formidable.
1893
Where will I find these connections, if not in the study of myself and the knowledge of men [...]?
1746
Bronze statuette of a goddess
ca. 3rd–1st century BCE
There is no perception that is not imbued with memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a thousand and one details of our past experience.
1896
But, as I do not know them, I cannot explain them, for I have no clear idea of my own mind[...]
1674-1675
The first education must [...] be purely negative. It consists not in teaching virtue or truth, but in protecting the heart from vice and the mind from error.
1762
One has no reason to fear what one does not know.
1643-1649
Two marble portrait heads from a relief
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
The artist triumphs over his faith, rises above it by making the objects of his faith objects of art.
1842-1845
The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man [...] that he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body.
1861
The decisive test of a heroic heart is when it is free to take revenge on an enemy at will.
1636
They must be able to take credit for the low prices they maintain in some provinces, to justify the high prices they set in others.
1776
Saint Thomas Aquinas Aided by Saints Peter and Paul
1460
Fortune blinds the minds of men when she does not wish them to oppose her designs.
1855
It is certain that nothing is rarer among human writings than a history that is well-made and accomplished in all its points.
1623
It is from this true and one world that the sensible world, which is not truly one, draws its existence: it is [...] multiple and divided into a plurality of parts that are separate from one another.
c. 253-270 AD
Decency, or the observance of the regard due to the age, sex, station, and character of a person, may be counted among the qualities that are agreeable to others and deserve to be approved.
1751
Portrait of a Man
1485
Content [...] with being a philosopher in reality, he was happy not to appear so, far from being angry about it.
c. 108 AD
To theories that were too exalted and paradoxical, [...] the author has opposed replies in the form of correctives which attenuate their scope.
1926
He who imagines he can bear fruit by himself is not united to the vine; he who is not in the vine is not in Jesus Christ, and he who is not in Jesus Christ is not a Christian.
1263-1264
You do not think that you are reading; you believe that these are things happening before your very eyes.
45 BC
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1515
[...] to govern a people according to its laws, one must know them, meditate on them, and endure arduous studies, which laziness always seeks to avoid.
1758
Science, produced by the historical movement and associating itself with it in full knowledge of the facts, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.
1847
Our life is impossibility, absurdity. Everything we want is contradictory to the conditions or consequences attached to it [...].
1947
[...] even attachment to parents is against pure nature, since it causes pleasure or sorrow.
4th century BC
The Seine: Morning
1874
I cannot become attached to a house that will not belong to my own after I am gone.
1715-1778
We are always more affected by what concerns us.
1643-1662
Attacks [...] are such habitual techniques of the mania for finding fault with everything and of old traditions maintaining themselves on their dunghill.
1777
The unlimited independence of the individual will cannot be a barrier against the vices that each of us carries within.
c. 350 BCE
Terracotta statuette of a woman
3rd century BCE
[...] the best temperaments are those that can endure both heat and cold equally.
100-120 AD
The meditation of divine things should have made [a man] gentle and charitable; yet what comes from him often seems proud, fierce, and full of harshness.
1686
Is man not a very unhappy creature? There is scarcely a pleasure [...] of which nature concedes him the full and entire enjoyment.
1580
True friendship [...] that neither hope, nor fear, nor the prospect of private interest can break.
63-64 AD
Marble grave relief with two portrait busts
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
Men are so constituted [...] that there is nothing they bear with more impatience than to see opinions they consider true be held against them as a crime.
1670
Reason enlightens but does not lead: [add to this], when decisions contrary to it have become habitual.
1801
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
What will I say when I see [...] a work in favor of the Christian religion? I will say that you have made the greatest possible abuse of the mind.
1741-1784
Madame Bergeret de Frouville as Diana
1756