[The most sterile of undertakings is] that of the philosophers [...] who have claimed to find the marvelous secret of producing an artificial happiness, a reasoned and reflected pleasure.
1742
[Bodies] would doubtless be something imaginary and apparent only, if there were nothing but matter and its modifications.
1686
Our life depends on the will of others, death depends only on our own.
1580
Man's thought is an admirable thing by its nature. [...] How great it is by its nature! How low it is by its defects!
1670
Dagger blade
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Whenever one consents to likelihoods, one puts oneself in danger of being mistaken, and indeed is almost always mistaken.
1674-1675
In matters of religion, all testimonies are suspect; the most enlightened man sees very poorly when he is seized by enthusiasm or, drunk with fanaticism, or seduced by his imagination.
1766
It is this mixture of greedy desires and false theories that made this insurrection so formidable after having given birth to it.
1893
There exist well-known [remedies]; but the gradation to be followed in administering them is so delicate [...] that very few people are able to benefit from them.
1623
Pendant in the form of a fish
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Chance [...] always plays a part in the making of illustrious men.
1772
This power shall be employed for the good of the body politic, and for the preservation of that which is the property of its members.
1690
One must not believe, therefore, that the universal Being [...] values a man more than an ant, a lion more than a stone.
17th century
For how many great captains have iron and fire sometimes succeeded less than a cleverly placed witticism?
1636
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1815
I knew nothing that I knew to belong to my essence, except that I was a thing that thinks, or a thing that has in itself the faculty of thinking.
1641
Verlaine, by the force of a superior idealism, crossed the painful distance in a single bound; or else he created around himself an invisible reality, as in his verses, a visible dream.
1926
In our eyes, the culmination of mysticism is a contact [...] with the creative effort manifested by life. This effort is of God, if it is not God himself.
1932
So separate yourself from the crowd [...] and, after too many storms for your limited course, may a quieter harbor finally welcome you.
c. 49 AD
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
It's not that there isn't perhaps something to correct and much to add to what I have said.
1769, published 1830
Hurt by the too manifest contradictions of our opinions, I sought through so many errors the abandoned paths of the true.
1746
The fatherland is always well defended, in whatever way it is defended, whether by glory or by shame.
1513-1519
If [...] man is a rational animal, it is because he is a social animal [...].
1893
Christ Bearing the Cross
1489
There is nothing we would rather reflect upon and practice than the means to be free and unhindered.
c. 108 AD
In reflection proper, one does nothing but throw all useless baggage overboard: this is what is called abstracting.
1819
If, indeed, there were an infinite body, [...] this body would not be in 'where' (ubi).
c. 1270
For I feel well, which is the sweetest thought, that I have lived my whole life in piety and justice.
4th century BC
Christ Taking Leave of His Mother
ca. 1500
I am [...] sure that there is a God, in the sense that I am [...] sure that my love is not illusory.
1947
For all things aim at the good.
End of the 4th century BC
The characteristic feature of Wagner's thought is its astonishing unity: a unity that connects writings from different eras [...] through the commonality of the point of view.
1896
The death of heroes resembles a sunset and not the bursting of a frog that has puffed itself up.
1841
Marble portrait of a young woman
ca. 98–117 CE
[...] as war removes all freedom from commerce, the surplus will cease to pass from one nation to another.
1776
For any strengthening, for any elevation of the 'man' type, a new kind of enslavement is necessary.
1882
[He was] a man accustomed for thirty-four years to subjugating everything, and who was then, in his old age, having his first experience of rout and flight.
100-120 AD
If this earth were what it seems it should be, [...] it is clear that it would have been impossible for one man to enslave another.
1764
Bolt
7000 BCE - 330 CE
When the ship perishes, one often still manages to escape the wreck; but when the storm engulfs the republic, no one escapes its fury.
86-82 BC
The cause of all our errors [...] is the perpetual and imperceptible variability of our ideas.
1817
[Evil] consists in privation, that is, in what the efficient cause does not do. This is why the Scholastics used to call the cause of evil deficient.
c. 253-270 AD
Considered up close, [the great men] were men whom love of their own interests made act against their conscience and nature; men whose acts are all worthy of the deepest contempt.
4th century BC
Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis
1495
Friendship is a sacred name, it is a holy thing; [...] There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice.
c. 1552-1553
There are eternal impressions that neither time nor care can erase. The wound heals, but the scar remains.
1761
All our intuitions are nothing but representations of phenomena; [...] the things we perceive are not in themselves as we perceive them.
1781
What was at first a mere brute fact becomes a legal right, guaranteed by society, supported and protected by social forces [...].
1869
Bronze oinochoe: olpe (jug)
6th century BCE