Who knows what he should esteem, or despise, or hate, if he does not know what is good or what is evil?
1746
[Some] have known of Religion only its Specter.
1745
The instinct and taste of humankind sustain [spiritualism]; they often save it in spite of men themselves, and keep afloat the names of those who attach themselves to it.
1835-1840
Conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the dissenting opinion is necessary to supply the rest of the truth of which the received doctrine realizes only a part.
1859
Peasants Dancing and Feasting
ca. 1660
The translation can present, at least to a certain degree, the physiognomy of the text.
55-56 AD
It is to make oneself a slave against the will of God to submit to the false appearances of truth.
1674-1675
To feel and to judge, that is our entire intelligence: [...] that is our whole being, all that we are. It is our entire existence.
1803
Books are but assemblies of words. Words convey ideas. But true ideas derive from a non-sensible principle, and can hardly be better expressed in words than it can.
4th century BC
Standing tambourine player
ca. 600–480 BCE
It is equality of origin that compels us to seek an equality founded on law.
c. 387 BC
[One must] make it so that the principal contentment depends only on oneself.
1643-1649
Cast your eyes over the nations and the times: examine the religious maxims which have been in vogue in the world, you will have difficulty persuading yourself that they are anything other than the dreams of a man in delirium.
1757
Excess, dangerous in everything, is fatal in political rivalries: it drives to madness [...] those who [...] want virtue to be attached to glory, and not glory to virtue.
100-120 AD
Two gutti from a group of fragments from the Temple of Apollo at Phigaleia (Bassae)
5th century BCE
If, because of the body, we are surrounded by evils, God has nevertheless given us virtue, which has no master.
c. 253-270 AD
At whatever price, one must subdue the affections of one's heart, [...] if one aspires to heroism.
1636
It is undoubtedly true that this phenomenon is not produced without means, that is to say, without a cause capable of producing such an effect.
1715-1716
Cruelties should be committed all at once, so that, their bitterness being less felt, they will provoke less anger; benefits, on the contrary, should be conferred slowly, so that they may be savored more.
1513
Bronze tripod base for a thymiaterion (incense burner)
ca. 475–450 BCE
It is better to refuse children any education than to give them a bad one.
1772
Morality [...] is not made up of two or three very general rules [...], but of a very large number of special precepts. There is not one duty, but duties.
1893
[Sabbatai Zevi] contracted three marriages, and it is claimed that he consummated none of them, saying that it was beneath him.
1764
Some are born posthumously.
1888
Saint Bernardino Preaching from a Pulpit
ca. 1470–75
If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I could only reply: "Because it was he; because it was I."
1580
It is easy to praise Providence [...], if one has within them these two things: the capacity to understand what happens to each person, and a grateful heart.
c. 108 AD
The contradiction in the existence of God.
1841
Critique must be flawless and unanswerable.
1934
Element
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Knowledge through reasoning is not the best thing in us, but only a step by which we rise to the desired end [...].
c. 1660
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
Indeed, all that is evident, whether by natural reason or by supernatural revelation, is not called faith; [...] it is not said that we believe but that we know the things that are evident.
1772
Glory is a brilliant fame [...], acquired through great and numerous services rendered to one's own, to one's country, to all of humanity.
46 BC
Limestone statue of a woman
early 6th century BCE
All political societies began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men acting freely in their choice of governors and forms of government.
1690
There can be no doubt that we are naturally free, since we are all companions, and it cannot enter anyone's mind that nature has placed anyone in servitude [...].
c. 1552-1553
That one must always go back to a first convention.
1762
In the Middle Ages [...] the people capable of thinking are few in number, but those who do think, do so boldly and without any consideration for common beliefs.
1926
Bronze statuette of a priest or offrant
3rd–1st century BCE
I would fear that you retained it humanly, if you had not forgotten the person from whom you learned it, to remember only God who alone can have truly taught it.
1656-1657
The property of 'where' (ubi) is to be in every terminated body [...], because place is not due to the indivisible as such.
c. 1270
It is not a need at all, but rather a mere curiosity that leads only to reveries, to engage in such investigations.
1786
Strictly speaking, the farmer produces nothing; he merely prepares the land to produce.
1776
Saint John on Patmos
ca. 1511
To pretend to have more than one has is boastfulness; to pretend to have less is dissimulation.
4th century BC
[Certain thinkers are] more harmful by enervating other geniuses or diverting them from their true course.
1620
Until its dissolution, Karl Marx took a very active part in the direction of the International [...].
March 17, 1883
The relationship of the mental to the cerebral is not a constant one, any more than it is a simple one.
1896
Saint Michael the Archangel
1640s