In the course of the development of large-scale industry, [working] time increasingly becomes the measure of the value of commodities, which is to say, also the measure of wages.
1849
The world is nothing but variety and dissimilarity.
1580
Hatred for the wicked is among the praised sentiments.
c. 72-126 AD
[A quick mind] is [...] the torch that illuminates in doubt, [...] the thread of Ariadne with which one can exit a labyrinth of the most entangled affairs.
1636
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
[...] aspiring to a degree of perfection that is easy to conceive, but impossible to achieve [...].
1741-1784
Must we therefore entrust the practice of all virtues of this class to the sure, though blind, instinct of feeling and taste?
1751
What a monstrous vice is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, which finds no name vile enough, which nature disavows having made and the tongue refuses to name?
c. 1552-1553
The idea of a miracle necessarily includes the idea of something rare and extraordinary. [...] [Natural things] are not miracles, because they are common things.
1715-1716
Terracotta statuette of a woman
late 4th–early 3rd century BCE
To trace back to its causes, one must first know it, and to know it, one must study its effects.
1817
Certain conditions are inherent to those who appear happy [...], but what makes the difference is the 'how'.
329-323 BC
Generally, those who have least examined their own opinions are the most vehement and the most attached to their own sense.
1689
The ancients who possessed the science of the Principle were equally content in success and in failure. For success and failure were equally indifferent to them.
4th century BC
Capriccio with St. Paul's and Old London Bridge
ca. 1745
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
Truthfulness is a duty which must be regarded as the basis of all duties founded on a contract, and, if one admits the slightest exception [...], one makes it unsteady and useless.
1797
[...] when a greater quantity of money had further raised prices, people bought from abroad where everything cost less, what they previously bought within the kingdom.
1776
Indeed, it is from the whole soul that the free decision emanates; and the act will be all the freer as the dynamic series to which it is connected tends more to identify with the fundamental self.
1889
Cloud Study (Distant Storm)
ca. 1786–1806
Each particular thing is expressed in an infinity of ways.
1661-1676
Education makes good men, and good men do noble deeds.
c. 387 BC
There is no true love without enthusiasm, and no enthusiasm without an object of perfection, real or chimerical, but always existing in the imagination.
1762
When one has found the truth, one must stand firm in it; since curiosity is given to us only to lead us to discover it.
1674-1675
Terracotta head of a woman wearing a high headdress
late 5th century BCE
One day in the month of October 1654.
1643-1662
Whatever one does not cultivate for its own sake, one cultivates only by half.
1905
[The administration is] almost as numerous as the population, preponderant, acting, regulating, constraining, wanting to foresee everything, taking charge of everything, always more aware of the interests of the administered than he is himself, ceaselessly active and sterile.
1856
Alliances [...] with a prince who cannot help you [...] have more glamour than real utility.
1513-1519
Terracotta antefix (roof tile) with head of a maenad
late 4th century BCE
Most governments exhort the citizen to search for [truth]; but almost all of them punish him for its discovery.
1772
He read in his imagination rather than in books.
1926
[...] solitude is the best preparation for the study of wisdom and the meditation of divine things.
1263-1264
I do not attribute it so much to the felicity of my genius as to the fact that having more affection for what concerns me than anyone else, I have also better examined the ways which might harm or benefit me.
1643-1649
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
True politicians know men better than those who make a profession of philosophy; I mean that they are truer philosophers.
1746
One does not accept the testimony of the murderer against the victim.
1942
To be better than the worst is not to be good.
63-64 AD
I concerned myself little with the heroes who disturb the world's peace.
1718-1778
Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (1778–1851), Daughter of Louis XVI
1795
Your [victory] did not extend beyond the combat; Rome did not see a single sword out of its sheath.
46 BC
As long as you do not know the idea according to which someone does something, never praise nor blame their action.
c. 108 AD
The interest involved is that of security, the most vital of all interests [...]. Nothing would have any value to us [...] if we could be deprived of a good an instant after having possessed it.
1861
The bonds of Christian communion are thus marked: one faith, one baptism, and not a single rite, a single opinion.
1623
Statuette of a warrior-11
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
Whenever reason is against a man, a man will be against reason.
1772
'Progress' is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea.
1888
God is the essence of objectified imagination, he is the personification and deification of our imagination [...].
1841
One of the characteristics of man is that his innate predispositions are very general and very vague.
1922
Limestone cippus of Philon
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE