A speaker may have good sense and fairness, but lack benevolence, and thus not give the best advice, even while knowing the subject.
329-323 BC
We are bound to our body, our parents, our friends, our prince, our homeland, by ties that we cannot break.
1674-1675
A dissonance that suddenly resolves into a chord makes the harmony more pleasing.
1623
[He was] certainly the most shameless of vicious men, and the most perfect scorner of decency and honesty.
100-120 AD
The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve
1475
Any man who has the power to harass or deceive men must be obliged to make a commitment not to do so.
1957
All abstraction is but the suppression of certain manifest ideas [...]. One can therefore call abstraction a negative attention, that is, a real action opposed to that by which the representation becomes clear.
1763
[Hope] makes them lose sight of present happiness; it renders them useless to society; it makes them believe [...] that God will reward in heaven their uselessness, their dark moods, [...] their idleness.
1766
An audience is not the mere sum of the individuals who compose it. Their sympathy gives them a certain social feeling that fills all its members...
1870
Chlorite pestle
ca. 1600–1050 BCE
Clarity adorns profound thoughts.
1747
If there is one rule common to all moralities, it is certainly that which prohibits attacks against the person [...].
1893
All things have sympathy for one another through their irrational life.
c. 253-270 AD
In man, the most elevated thing is a vast and luminous intelligence, the principle of his best-conducted operations [...].
1636
L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien, 1848–1911)
1888–89
Certainly the memory of a pain is very different from the pain itself.
1805
It is an extreme misfortune to be subject to a master of whom one can never be sure that he will be good, since it is always in his power to be evil when he pleases.
c. 1552-1553
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
The Senate [...] condemned Caius Vatienus to life imprisonment [...] for having deliberately cut off his left thumb to exempt himself from that journey.
1580
The Muse: History
ca. 1865
[The body politic] must necessarily move in the direction where the greatest force pushes and carries it, which is the consent of the majority.
1690
I desire neither reputation nor fortune, because these things do not bring happiness.
4th century BC
Do you always call this kind of endurance, this foolish endurance, a fine and good thing?
c. 380 BC
Nor is it proper to cite as proof that which is still under discussion.
86-82 BC
Saints Matthew and Francis
ca. 1435
Great men, like great epochs, are explosive materials in which a tremendous force is accumulated.
1888
It goes without saying that whoever takes up the gauntlet risks being beaten; is that a reason to admit defeat and surrender without a fight?
1851-1852
Passionate critics always end up being wrong in the face of cold critics.
1762
The idea of substituting national troops for mercenary troops.
1855
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1520–25
Democracy does not bind men strongly to one another; but it makes their habitual relationships easier.
1835-1840
The moral instinct has always guided me well; my conscience has kept its original integrity.
1776-1778
It is a great glory to die on an occasion which causes one to be universally lamented, praised, and regretted by all who have some human feeling.
1643-1649
What do we call those who obey all their ideas? Madmen. — Well, do we do anything else?
c. 108 AD
Faience aegis pectoral with lion (?) head
664–30 BCE
To be original, [the writer] is obliged to prepare the ruin of a language whose progress he would have hastened a century earlier.
1746
Virtue needs no embellishment; it is its own greatest adornment, and it consecrates the body it inhabits.
63-64 AD
It is much more difficult to find important truths [...] than to find the demonstration of truths that another has discovered.
1704
God, this purely ideal, purely rational entity, does not exist outside of our idea, outside of our reason.
1841
The Meeting of Alexander the Great and Diogenes
1605
One cannot preserve old grace except by acquiring new grace; otherwise, one will lose what one thinks one holds, like those who, wishing to enclose the light, enclose only darkness.
1656-1657
In animals, clothing and weapons are substantial parts of those same animals; [...] but between our clothing, our weapons, and us, there is a real relation.
c. 1270
A philosopher becomes attached to a favorite principle [...] at once he wants to subject the entire universe to it, & reduce all phenomena to it; which throws him into forced reasonings, & into countless absurdities.
1742
If patricians were to elect their colleagues [...], without passion and solely for the public interest, no government could be compared to an aristocratic one.
1677
Limestone finial of a funerary stele
late 5th or early 4th century BCE
It is the irony of life that the most energetic feelings of gratitude and devotion [...] develop in us towards those who, having the power to annihilate our existence [...], are pleased to abstain from it.
1869
[...] elevated minds will be tempted to seek and deduce the general laws of history, a science yet to be made, if it can be made.
1756
The name of genius that the public gives to such different men therefore supposes a common quality that characterizes genius in them.
1758
The role of the brain in the operation of memory: it does not serve to preserve the past, but first to mask it, then to allow what is practically useful to show through.
1919
Castle by a River
1647