Socrates was the first to bring true philosophy down from the heavens [...] to make everyone discourse on what can serve to regulate life, to form morals, and to distinguish what is good from what is evil.
45 BC
Let a good work appear at that moment, it can bring about happy reforms; but, that moment passed, the citizens [...] are invincibly drawn towards ignorance.
1772
This domination [...] which he had obtained with so much difficulty, brought him no other fruit than an empty title, and a glory that exposed him to the hatred of his fellow citizens.
100-120 AD
It is therefore a sacred command of reason, an order which admits of no condition [...] that which commands us to be truthful (loyal) in all our declarations.
1797
Portrait of a Woman
1817
The equilibrium between a gaseous mass and a liquid column is only a particular case of the equilibrium observed between two liquid columns in communicating vessels.
1663
Only enunciative discourse, which signifies the true or the false, [...] is our subject; other types of discourse [...] belong rather to rhetoric or poetics.
c. 1270
Men, being accustomed to judging events by their results, blame the author of the advice for all the evil that follows.
1513-1519
There is nothing false, nothing unworthy of being said and recommended in writing for times to come.
1574
Saint Teresa of Avila Interceding for Souls in Purgatory
1597
When one must apply theory to practice, [...] these riddles are no longer an amusement, and if one cannot solve them, they become a source of anxiety.
1609
Interests come together, they merge, and, although men all appear dependent, all, in fact, are independent.
1776
At the same time as societies, individuals are transformed as a result of the changes that occur in the number of social units and their relationships.
1893
Patience is the art of hoping.
1747
Virgin and Child
1475–99
No one should, for the love of life, resolve to live in servitude.
c. 387 BC
To ruin oneself only to be bored is too unbearable.
1782-1789
True patriotism is made of concentric layers, whose center [...] is the love of family; without the latter, only a sordid association of interests remains.
1896
[For the complete epic] would have been too extensive and difficult to grasp as a whole.
c. 335 BC
Upper part of a limestone warrior from a chariot group
first half of the 6th century BCE
[...] even attachment to parents is against pure nature, since it causes pleasure or sorrow.
4th century BC
[...] religion is a defensive reaction of nature against the representation, by intelligence, of the inevitability of death.
1932
If men were very enlightened, universal approval would be a reason: but it is quite the contrary.
1674-1675
Sensation has for its general condition that the universal animal be sympathetic to itself; without this, how could one thing partake in the power of another thing from which it is very distant?
c. 253-270 AD
Madonna and Child
ca. 1470
Thus the Cartesian principle [I think, therefore I am] is good, but it is not the only one of its kind.
1704
To condemn a political enemy to death [...] is a horrible assassination; to declare one's adversary unworthy of possessing that same power [...] can seem the honest outcome of the struggle.
1835-1840
It is not enough to say 'I have seen'; one must show and demonstrate that one has seen. Otherwise, it is no more authentic than hearsay.
17th century
Nature has not lavished time upon us with so liberal a hand that we have any to spare; and see how much of it escapes even the most careful.
63-64 AD
Limestone statuette of Zeus Ammon
4th century BCE
The ultimate sanction of all morality (external motives apart) is a subjective feeling in our own minds.
1861
If one thinks of God only as one, one thinks of him either as a thing [...] or as a subject, and then [...] he needs an object, so that creation would be a necessity and not love.
1951
If, indeed, you were truly persuaded that it is you who possess the true goods, and that they are mistaken, you would not worry about what they say of you.
c. 108 AD
the perpetual unexpected giving his style the value of an October landscape that clouds [...] modulate.
1926
Limestone Bes
late 6th–early 5th century BCE
Malice is a shade of fury and affectation is a beginning of frenzy.
1772
It is with words that we reason about ideas [...]. What we call reasoning is to make judgments that follow from the first ones.
1805
Without force, what can common sense do? Everything, with time.
1773
The human imagination can conceive of nothing, good or evil, that is not [found in philosophy]: Nothing so absurd can be said that has not been said by some philosopher.
1580
Madonna and Child with Saints
1607
This proves not only that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at all.
1637
There is perhaps not a single living being who would not have already ended their existence, if this end were something purely negative [...]. But there is a positive side to it: the destruction of the body.
1851
Is it not true [...] that you do not worship this mistletoe, but the one who made the mistletoe and the oak?
1747
Between chastity and sensuality there is not necessarily an opposition; every good marriage, every serious passion of the heart is above this opposition.
1887
Limestone plaque with two eyes
480–310 BCE
The American crisis came and [...] wages, taken as a whole, were suddenly reduced to about a quarter of their previous amount. Did the price of wheat fall? No, it rose.
1865
A life woven from pleasures [...] is infinitely more subject to disgust than a laborious life.
1742
The art [...] that no one can mark the limits of your capacity will remain [...] fruitless if you do not add to it the art of hiding the affections of your heart.
1636
Not having a notion of spiritual substance no more authorizes us to deny the existence of spirits, than to deny for the same reason the existence of bodies.
1689
Peasants Dancing
1651