Dinner is the understanding of the ancient Scriptures, while the supper is the knowledge of the mysteries hidden in the New Testament.
1263-1264
As the moral density of society rises, it becomes itself like a great city that would contain the entire population within its walls.
1893
[A certain] mobility of impressions [...] stems from one's very nature and not from external causes.
1926
Why [...] did you not take advantage of your meeting with him to tell him plainly that life and death are one and the same thing; that there is no distinction between yes and no?
4th century BC
Self-Portrait
ca. 1850
The courts [...] have often put the innocent to death, and often acquitted the guilty whose language had moved their pity or flattered their ears.
4th century BC
There are [...] truths so luminous that nothing can obscure their clarity.
81 BC
Culture proper [...] can only be given to a few, and can be received by an even smaller number.
1819
Chrysippus taught that mixtion is broader than temperation.
c. 253-270 AD
Gold lion-head pendant
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
The physician, or the politician, whose prognostics are almost always right [...] gives a very clear proof of his talent and capacity.
1623
Why not stay [...]? Because I am a fool.
1741-1784
It is upon [its] happy return that love breathes [...] a dormant and covered fire that winter concealed within our veins.
1546/1563
It is not under the blows of truth, but under the blows of the powerful that error will succumb.
1772
Limestone statuette of a female votary
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Nature, considered materially, is therefore the sum of all objects of experience.
1783
The annoyances of life affect [virtue] no more, when they rain down on it, than a light shower affects the Ocean.
63-64 AD
...as if the word 'great' added anything to power.
1753-1754
Whoever holds in his hand what you desire or what you fear, is your master.
c. 108 AD
Allegory of the Arts
1742
We [...] only want to believe what evidence compels us to believe.
1707
God is only the fictitious projection of man.
1841
To suppose a second draft on such a frivolous motive is to multiply beings without the slightest necessity.
c. 334 BC
There is a kind of contradiction between the two principles of human nature upon which religion is founded. Our natural terrors make us see a wicked deity [...]; our inclination to praise paints it as excellent and all-perfect.
1757
Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772)
1757
In Lacedaemon, schoolmasters would punish children by biting their thumbs.
1580
To produce, in effect, is to give new forms to matter [...].
1776
To prefer Vice to Virtue is visibly to judge wrongly.
1689
Men are moved by two powerful motives: affection or fear; and it is as easy for one who makes himself feared to command, as for one who makes himself loved.
1513-1519
Mother and Child
probably 1860s
When one is convinced of the reality of change and has made an effort to grasp it again, everything is simplified.
1911
I appeal to my courage and my sword.
1636
The mystery of prayer.
1841
You will easily admit that nature, not in its whole, but in its parts, suffers violence by the movement of some overcoming the resistance of others; this is what God uses for the ornament and variety of the world.
1653-1662
The Man of Sorrows
ca. 1430
What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial product; it is the result of forced repression in one direction, and unnatural stimulation in another.
1869
If it were as easy to command the mind as it is to command the tongue, every power would reign in security, and no government would need to resort to violence.
1670
The extension of bodies [...] has an inestimable advantage: it is extremely divisible and invariable. [...] This is what makes it eminently measurable.
1817
I entertain these feelings only as friends whom I do not believe I shall keep.
1643-1649
Madame la Comtesse de Boufflers and Thérèse
mid-1760s
If it happens even once that he would rather be another than himself, were that other Socrates or Cato, all is lost; he who begins to become a stranger to himself will not be long in forgetting himself completely.
1762
Faith is a virtue invented by men who feared the enlightenment of reason, who wanted to deceive their fellow men in order to subject them to their own authority [...].
1766
One must flee what is shameful, and blush for it.
100-120 AD
For the woman, the sources of happiness are in the conjugal home. Seeing in advance [...] the only path that can lead to domestic felicity, she enters it from her first steps [...]
1835-1840
Bronze stamp
1st–2nd century CE
I am not one of those for whom commitment takes the place of reason.
1695
Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the oldest and longest history of man teaches us — and in punishment too there is so much that is festive!
1887
The great sorrow of human life is that looking and eating are two different operations.
1942
[...] the poor and the rich equally unhappy with their station, and consequently equally unjust and blind, for they envy one another, and believe each other to be happy.
1746
The Coronation of the Virgin
1475