It was less the sacred union of two spouses than the monstrous association of two accomplices.
66 BC
True eloquence [...] tears children from their games, the elderly from their armchairs, the sick from their warm rooms.
1870
The desire of the clergy has always been to be powerful and rich. By what means did it manage to satisfy this? Through the sale of fear and hope.
1772
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
Knife
670 BCE - 330 CE
Everyone must strive to live as honorably as possible and not dishonor the reputation of their ancestors.
c. 387 BC
If the peoples who preceded us had held the respect for individual dignity that we profess today, they could not have survived.
1893
To be truly clever, one must avoid appearing so and sometimes even seem a fool.
1609
In divine matters, [...] it is in old age that virtue has more brilliance, more skill, more application, without age posing any obstacle.
1263-1264
Axehead
ca. 3200–2000 BCE
Strong intellectual suffering makes us insensitive to bodily suffering; we despise it.
1851
They [The peasants] cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must appear [...] as their master, as an authority, as an unlimited power [...].
1851/1852
A gentle melancholy, that tender feeling on which noble hearts feed, [...] would bring them more true happiness than the transports of gaiety of light minds and the loud laughter of fools.
1760
men are in a natural and immutable powerlessness to treat any science whatsoever in an absolutely complete order.
circa 1658
Bronze sphinx
late 6th century–early 5th century BCE
When it comes to spending time, we are lavish to the point of excess with the one thing in which it is honorable to be stingy.
c. 49 AD
[Witty remarks and bold actions] have often been like wings to suddenly reach the summit of greatness.
1636
An emperor must die on his feet.
1580
That dishonest man has more than I! [...] It's because from the point of view of money, he is better than you; for he flatters, he is shameless, he works into the night.
c. 108 AD
Saint Nicholas of Bari
mid-1430s
With his ears full of music and his mouth full of delicacies, the upstart is not happy. The worry of maintaining his position makes him like a beast of burden endlessly climbing the same slope.
4th century BC
Whatever affection one may feel [...] for others, it is not and cannot be disinterested; [...] the most generous friendship [...] is only a modification of self-love.
1751
For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well.
1637
Men reason about things only in relation to the ideas that are most familiar to them.
1674-1675
Shist whetstone or polisher
ca. 1600–1050 BCE or earlier
No thing, considered in itself, has within it a cause by which it can destroy itself.
c. 1660
Republics whose wills are uncertain never know how to make a good decision except when necessity obliges them to.
1513-1519
one admired with what skill Fortune knows how to bring about one thing through another, to bring together the most distant facts, to link them with the same chain, when they seemed to differ most from one another [...].
100-120 AD
We have contented ourselves with [...] dismissing [the skeptics] and overwhelming them with an affected contempt, which both hides and reveals the inability to defeat them; for it is easier to disdain than to answer.
1817
Part of the left foot of a colossal marble statue
3rd–2nd century BCE
We must examine whether the nature of generation and that of alteration are the same, or if they are distinct in reality, as they are by the names that designate them.
c. 350 B.C.E.
[Pity inspires] this other maxim of natural goodness [...]: Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others.
1755
Ah! It was better to stay in the paradise of El Dorado than to return to this cursed Europe. [...] All is but illusion and calamity.
1759
The excess of dependence to which the woman is reduced inspires [...] the idea that the law has delivered her to them as their thing, to be used at their discretion.
1869
James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox
ca. 1633–35
Attention consists of suspending one's thought, leaving it available, empty, and penetrable to the object [...]. Thought must be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.
1942
A false idea, but clear and precise, will always have more power in the world than a true but complex one.
1835-1840
[...] religion is a defensive reaction of nature against the representation, by intelligence, of the inevitability of death.
1932
Every animal, the philosophical beast like any other, strives instinctively for an optimum of favorable conditions under which it can fully release its power and achieve its maximum feeling of power.
1887
Marble fragments of a statue of the emperor Caracalla
ca. 217–230 CE
It is a misfortune of men to finally become disgusted with reason itself, and to grow weary of the light. Chimeras begin to return and are pleasing, because they have something of the marvelous.
1715-1716
In the fine arts, wealth is almost always the mortal enemy of the sublime.
1741-1784
Solitude is to the mind what diet is to the body: deadly when it is too long, although necessary.
1746
An image remains essentially an image everywhere, whether sculpted and painted, or simply imaginative [...] and in adoring the god it represents, one cannot help but adore it at the same time.
1841
Young Girl in a Pink-and-Black Hat
ca. 1891
Mercy, rarely used and with judgment, is a beautiful and singular virtue in a prince; but ordinary clemency without distinction [...] is the complete subversion of all order.
c. 1552-1553
Rights of humanity opposed to property rights! What jargon!
1776
We must recognize that these two powers, the political and the paternal, are truly distinct and separate, are built upon different foundations, and have different ends.
1690
The world is an organized and living being, an animal, [...] and full of a great Soul in which all particular souls are contained.
c. 253-270 AD
Tripod leg ?
ca. 675–650 BCE