Favorites About

Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

Français

The tribunal and the prison are different places [...]; but your judgment and your will can remain the same in either, if you wish.

c. 108 AD

I have, from an early age, distrusted all the decisions of philosophers: & I have always felt more inclined to dispute their dogmas than to embrace them.

1742

If only one story is treated in the epic, [...] the work seems shortened, or else [...] it seems diluted.

c. 335 BC

The pursuit of pleasure is permitted. Why deprive oneself of it when these pleasures do no harm to society?

1772

Anthonis Mor van Dashorst

Portrait of a Man, Possibly Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586), Duke of Parma and Piacenza

Portrait of a Man, Possibly Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586), Duke of Parma and Piacenza

1563

Most of the souls of the unfortunate mortals [...] complained [...] that they were condemned to this eternal misfortune only for having taken a wife.

1518-1527

Hierarchy is exclusively a social thing. It is only in society that there are superiors, inferiors, and equals.

1912

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

c. 375 BC

The love that consumes him is no longer simply the love of a man for God, it is the love of God for all men. Through God, by God, he loves all of humanity with a divine love.

1932

Greek Artist

Marble architectural fragment with palmette from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis

Marble architectural fragment with palmette from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis

3rd or 2nd century BCE

For dying, which is the greatest task we have to do, practice cannot help us. [...] we are all apprentices when we come to it.

1580

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

...which lanterns shall have multiple lights, to be distinguished from those of the citizens, and to be recognized at once and without difficulty as being for hire.

1662

Contingency begins for us [...] at the moment when the possibility of deducing fails us, and makes us feel the need to sense new perceptions.

1805

Etruscan artist

Statuette of a girl

Statuette of a girl

ca. 550–500 BCE

Any company that does not elevate, debases; and the more intimate and familiar it is, the more it has this result.

1869

The will is a blind power, which can only direct itself toward things that the understanding represents to it.

1674-1675

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

It is known that these condemnations were usually carried out in effigy and that worthless old papers were burned instead of the book itself.

1746

Emmanuel Tzanès

Head of Saint John the Baptist

Head of Saint John the Baptist

1636

[...] praise the goodness of kings [...] and the submission of their subjects.

c. 1552-1553

[This book] was not composed by St. John, but by one Cerinthus, who had used a great name to give more weight to his reveries.

1764

God as a being of reason.

1841

[...] all the people there are so poor that no one studies or reasons, except to make a living.

1643-1649

Egyptian

Chalcedony amulet, thunderbolt

Chalcedony amulet, thunderbolt

664–334 BCE

Despair is the greatest of our errors.

1746

[...] if we consider the objects of the senses [...] as mere phenomena, we thereby acknowledge that a thing in itself underlies them, although we do not know what it is [...].

1783

The people [...] always have the right to shake off the yoke, and to free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny that the sword and violence have introduced [...].

1690

The world above the heavens, no poet will ever sing of it worthily... For that which is without color, without form, [...] reality as it truly is, can only be contemplated by the spirit.

1953

Roman Artist

Marble portrait, probably of Matidia, niece of the emperor Trajan and mother of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian

Marble portrait, probably of Matidia, niece of the emperor Trajan and mother of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian

117–138 CE

Happier than the Italians, because we came later, our language was perfected in more favorable circumstances.

1768

This [...] is the shooting of a shooter, of a man who wants to shoot, of a man who knows he is shooting (art, not nature).

4th century BC

One awaits the happy ending without any anxiety. It is expected, and besides, the journey is so charming that one gladly lingers.

1926

It is not impossible, metaphysically speaking, that there could be a dream as continuous and lasting as a man's life; but this is a thing as contrary to reason as the fiction of a book being formed by chance [...].

1704

Greek Artist

Bronze hydria (water jar)

Bronze hydria (water jar)

early 4th century BCE

[A man] was always ready, out of spite, to undo the good he had just accomplished.

100-120 AD

The relation habitus is not founded immediately in the substance [...] [but] by means of some quality, such as hardness, softness.

c. 1270

To judge is nothing other than to distinguish or to discern; imagination and judgment are commonly included under the name of mind [...].

1772

It is more in keeping with humanity to laugh at the things of life than to groan over them.

49 to 62 A.D.

Jean-Georges Vibert

The Missionary's Adventures

The Missionary's Adventures

ca. 1883

In science, the human mind obeys the action of sensation [...]; whereas, in faith, it obeys the action of the soul, which is the nobler agent.

1623

It is distressing to be deceived; more distressing to be deceived by one of your own.

81 BC

When we have discovered the true meaning [of Scripture], we must necessarily resort to judgment and reason to give our assent to it.

1670

Why democratic peoples naturally desire peace, and democratic armies naturally desire war.

1835-1840

Greek Artist

Marble fragment of a stele (grave marker) of a youth

Marble fragment of a stele (grave marker) of a youth

mid-4th century BCE

The artist clearly understood the mission that was addressed only to him, to restore to myth its virile nature and to deliver music, to force it to speak.

1876

Who has not had acquaintances, friends, or relatives who have voluntarily left this world? And should we think of these people with horror, as if they were criminals?

1851

Generally one finds a tendency for the amount of currency to decrease in the face of an enormous increase in value, not only in commodities but in monetary transactions in general.

1865

Taking the term in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed, and never will. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed.

1762

Roman Artist

Bronze statuette of a comic actor

Bronze statuette of a comic actor

ca. 1st–2nd century CE