[It is] the power that priests arrogate to themselves [...] to forgive, in the name of heaven, the sins confessed to them.
1766
To deny consequences because of their absurdity, and to pretend to maintain their principles, is [...] to fall into the most shameful of contradictions.
1st Century A.D.
Children, being by nature as free as their father, [...] may, while in that freedom, choose what society they please.
1690
Animals and plants die when they do not take in food; it is the being itself that is then consumed.
c. 350 BC
The Forest at Pontaubert
1881
This proves not only that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at all.
1637
Paganism sacrificed bodies, whereas Christianity sacrifices souls.
1842-1845
It is society that has provided the canvas on which logical thought has worked.
1912
[Reason] only comes to perfectly possess the knowledge of a thing by going from the better known to the lesser known.
c. 1270
Portrait of a Man, Possibly Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586), Duke of Parma and Piacenza
1563
The character already appears: [...] an attentive observer will soon see it assert itself in all its rigor, and a short time after no one will be able to deny its presence.
1819
The act for which one would pay with one's head if it were clandestine, we advocate for when it is committed in military uniform.
63-64 AD
The wicked are at bottom the greatest dupes, for they have sacrificed the happiness of enjoying [...] the pleasure of being virtuous, to acquire trifles of no value.
1751
One ceases to be simple, not only because one is not like the others, but also because one wants to appear to be what one is not.
1776
Limestone statuette of Herakles as an archer
middle or 3rd quarter of the 6th century BCE
[It was] not to honor [the deceased], but according to the maxim of Princes to provide for their present safety by the fear of future punishments.
1754
I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by an honest amusement: or if I study, I seek in them only the knowledge that treats of knowing myself, and that instructs me how to die well and to live well.
1580
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
One sees by this [...] how men only abandon the object of their ambition to pursue another.
1513-1519
Bronze statuette of a youth carrying a pig
early 5th century BCE
What would you want then? For you to do as you please, while they cannot even say what they please?
c. 108 AD
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is wounded, something better than it grows.
1883-1885
Passions always try to justify themselves, and they persuade us insensibly that we are right to follow them.
1674-1675
You are going astray, this is the way to go.
1636
Portrait of a Venetian Senator
ca. 1525
Invention is the sole proof of genius.
1746
A writer so full of research, so clear, so abundant, and who puts so much soul into everything he says, could he not be truly profound!
45 BC
I asked myself what I had to do.
1893
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are familiar.
1859
Bronze cauldron
7th century BCE
[Love] is that insatiable and infinite desire of the soul, [...] itself moved by a perpetual and never-satiated desire.
c. 253-270 AD
One ends up loving their established power: know how to govern [...] and all is forgotten.
1776-1777
Old fool [...] who eats without ploughing and dresses without spinning. You who claim that merely opening your lips [...] is enough to establish the distinction between good and evil.
4th century BC
Wildness is independence from all laws. Discipline submits man to the laws of humanity [...].
1797-1798
Limestone statue of a male votary holding a bird in the left hand
ca 500–450 BCE
The most useful principle of morality [...] is that every crime is a certain cause of suffering for the one who commits it.
1797-1798
Our character is still us [...].
1889
Justice is the firm resolution to render to each what is his due according to civil law; injustice consists in taking from someone, under the pretext of right, what is due to him.
1670
The garment of the church is a garment of many colors.
1623
Marble head of a girl from a small statue
3rd century BCE
In those days, to be able to print one's thoughts with freedom, one had to found a small journal oneself.
1926
Gifts and loans, that is the financial science of the lumpenproletariat, high and low.
1851/1852
The thefts, murders, and accidents that happen daily in our good city of Paris, for lack of sufficient light in the streets [...].
1662
A distinction must be made between what is certain and what is necessary: [...] future contingents are assured, since God foresees them, but it is not for that reason admitted that they are necessary.
1686
Basket of Flowers
1848–49
As long as there is a struggle for power on the surface of the globe, and as long as the decisive factor for victory is industrial production, the workers will be exploited.
1934
Interest is the sole dispenser of the esteem or contempt that nations have for their different morals, customs, and ways of thinking.
1758
Is not pleasure most often an absence of pain?
c. 360 BC
There is nothing that so loves the unkempt and the disheveled as the thing imagined.
1773
Terracotta plaque
27 BCE–68 CE