Wherever fear reigns, one finds, in effect, the same good faith.
1855
He gave me a discourse on the science of the palate with a magisterial countenance, as if he had been speaking of some great point of theology.
1580
If I have voluntarily braved so many dangers [...] it was so that every citizen would have the freedom to uphold the laws.
100-120 AD
The most beautiful, most pleasant, and most necessary of all our knowledge is undoubtedly the knowledge of ourselves.
1674-1675
The Bacino, Venice, with the Dogana and a Distant View of the Isola di San Giorgio
ca. 1709
I would never advise anyone to read [me], except those who would wish to [...] meditate seriously, and who can detach their minds from the commerce of the senses and [...] from all sorts of prejudices.
1641
God placed the soul in the world so that, seeing the evils of which matter is the principle, it might return to the Father and be forever freed from such contagion.
c. 253-270 AD
If [...] the sacred principle is nothing other than society hypostasized and transfigured, ritual life must be interpretable in lay and social terms.
1912
Most great captains become so by degrees. This prince was born a general; the art of war seemed in him a natural instinct.
1751
Saint George
1472
It takes great qualities to make a hero.
1636
It is among plants that we find the longest-living beings [...]. [It is because] plants are always rejuvenating; and that is why they live so long.
c. 350 BC
It is a question [...] of nothing less than to annihilate forever [...] all public will, all agreement of good men against the fury and audacity of the wicked.
63 BC
If [propositions] are false, it is not in themselves and taken in isolation, but because of their lack of connection with previous true judgments.
1805
Bronze statuette of a sphinx
ca. 1st century BCE–2nd century CE
One cannot conclude from the true definition of God the necessary existence of several gods.
1661-1676
...after having felt the universal vanity of everything: of glory and banquets, of friendship and interviews, of kindness and philology.
1926
One should judge people by their deeds rather than their words.
c. 380 BC
The image reflected by several mirrors [...], weakens more and more with each reflection [...]. It is the same with knowledge produced by a long series of proofs.
1704
Rustic Interior
1632
The health of the soul requires [...] exercises that are proper and necessary to it: if you deprive it of them, it grows heavy and goes out of order.
1745
To write better means at the same time to think better; to discover things that are ever more worthy of being communicated and to truly know how to communicate them.
1879
Let a young man, upon entering the world, see the maxims of his masters honored by public approval; [...] they will become the rule of his conduct; he will be virtuous.
1772
Submitting to the laws of a country [...] does not make a man a member of the society established there: it is but a local protection and a local homage [...].
1690
Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley
1882–85
Human life can be compared to a race [...] where one has no other goal and no other reward than to outpace one's competitors.
1772
[Speech is forbidden] for fear that their favorites who abuse their power might thereby be known and punished.
1574
To live without pain is not a human state; to live thus is to be dead.
1761
The bourgeois republic signifies the unlimited despotism of one class over other classes.
1851/1852
Standing boy with a goose
3rd century BCE
God allows us to be in the midst of dangers, to test our courage [...] and to teach us to turn to Him alone who can save us even when all hope is lost.
1263-1264
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
1859
Women [...] are the music of life: they know how to accept and assimilate everything [...] frankly and with fewer reservations, to further embellish it with their sympathy.
1896
Violent and uncertain agitation of the human spirit [...]
1864-1866
Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827–1910)
ca. 1852–57
To dethrone an emperor is to lack equity; to kill his subjects is to lack goodness; to profit from the crimes of others would be to lack decency.
4th century BC
The June movement was above all a reaction of relaxation [...]. Fear, jealousy, and the race for bonuses have largely disappeared.
1934-1942
Sickness is the natural state of the Christian.
1670
Like everything in this world, an advantage does not come without its disadvantages. This is what happens with reason, the exclusive privilege of man.
1819
The Smoker
ca. 1623–25
Man, what are you doing? You refute yourself every day.
c. 108 AD
no protection has ever preserved a Book from the blows of Criticism.
1627
It cannot [...] be a matter of indifference to morality whether or not one forms the concept of a final end of all things.
1793
Value is less in the thing itself than in the esteem we have for it, and this esteem is relative to our need.
1776
Limestone statue of a woman
early 6th century BCE
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
1746
The principles of morality are everywhere the same, although the consequences that men draw from them are often very different.
1751
One has thus oscillated from idealism to realism and from realism to idealism, but so rapidly that one has believed oneself to be motionless and, as it were, straddling the two systems combined into one.
1919
This world that you see, which encompasses the domain of gods and men, is one: we are members of a great body.
63-64 AD
Marble portrait, probably of Matidia, niece of the emperor Trajan and mother of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian
117–138 CE