[...] the religious question served as a pretext for the exercise of many selfish passions.
c. 1552-1553
It is solely the intoxication produced by the rapidity of technical progress that has given birth to the mad idea that work could one day become superfluous.
1934
One of the most important institutions of a State must be that which ensures that citizens, under the pretext of doing good, cannot do evil.
1513-1519
To reduce life to laws and methods is to take on a difficult task, and most often a frivolous one.
1742
Relief from casket
670 BCE - 330 CE
When without knowing it [...] one does something unjust, one is not truly unjust; one is simply unfortunate.
4th century BC
What a foolish thing, an old man learning his ABCs!
1580
In the matters of life, we should have a way of assessing people, just like we do with currency.
c. 108 AD
There are two kinds of excess: one which, by changing the nature of a thing and making it bad from good [...]; the other which only increases its measure, and only makes the good better.
1643-1649
A Country Road
1648
The works of wisdom surpass those of valor in the importance, extent, and duration of their effects.
1620
The meditation of divine things should have made [a man] gentle and charitable; yet what comes from him often seems proud, fierce, and full of harshness.
1686
The entire outer man corresponds [...] to the entire inner man.
1766
The noun [...] is always the subject of the proposition; the verb is its attribute; and the other elements [...] are but modifiers of these, which sheds great light on the act of judging.
1805
Limestone plaque with two eyes in relief
480–310 BCE
The works which have for their object eternal life survive death, and the fruit of these works begins to appear when the fruit of carnal works is forever annihilated.
1263-1264
One ought, out of love for life, to want a different kind of death, free, conscious, not accidental, not a surprise.
1888
Those who have stolen a little are locked in prisons. Those who have stolen a lot are seated on thrones.
4th century BC
Thought is an invisible and almost intangible power that defies all tyrannies.
1835-1840
A Man with the Initials JD
1790
Hope makes more dupes than skill.
1746
[...] to say or to think that there are no such faculties [other than our own] [...] is to reason as justly as a Blind man who would maintain that there is neither Sight nor Colors.
1689
Thales [...] laid the foundations of philosophy in Greece.
45 BC
A man is best portrayed in his career, in his works, and in his words.
1896
Saint Francis in Ecstasy
ca. 1650
You know how much these troubles disturb the peace of the household, both externally and internally.
1656-1657
Just as there is nothing sweeter [...] than to entertain our reasons and approve of our opinions, there is also nothing so shocking as to see that they are not understood.
1674-1675
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism [...] is that the thing, reality, [...] is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as concrete human activity, not as practice.
1841
There are [...], at the base of our civilization, a certain number of principles that [...] are common to all [...]: respect for reason, for science, for the ideas and feelings that are the basis of democratic morality.
1922
The Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1470
After going into debt fifty times for vice, go into debt once for virtue.
1741-1784
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
[...] you would imagine you had healed it with words, and that we would have this conversation together.
1764
This flight [from evil] is the resemblance to God, as much as it is in our power; and one resembles God through justice, holiness, and wisdom.
c. 253-270 AD
Limestone cippus of Philon
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
The city is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
c. 375 BC
Everything can change its appearance in this world, because everything is subject to growth and decline.
1636
From the father, the child receives the will, the character; from the mother, the intellect. The latter is the liberating principle; the will, the binding principle.
1851
Intelligence will at first advise selfishness. It is in this direction that the intelligent being will rush if nothing stops it. But nature is watching.
1932
Bronze phiale (libation bowl) with four swinging handles
ca. 550 BCE
What is the principle that makes us compare objects to each other [...]? Interest, which is [...] an effect of physical sensibility.
1772
...I am neither sick nor well.
49 to 62 A.D.
Man represents only himself; woman represents all of posterity.
1926
[Doctrine] is what every good Christian must believe, on pain of being burned [...]. The dogmas of Religion are immutable decrees of God who can only change his mind when the Church changes hers.
1768
John Gray (1731–1811) of Newholm
1776
I am bound not to rob, not to murder [...]; but why am I bound to promote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?
1861
Faith requires not so much truth in doctrines as piety, that is, that which moves the spirit to obedience.
1670
Happiness is a permanent state which does not seem to be made for man here below. Everything on earth is in a continual flux which allows nothing to take on a constant form.
1776-1778
I had to make it a law for myself to establish nothing that was not indisputable, and that everyone could not, with the slightest reflection, perceive in themselves.
1746
The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara
ca. 1510