[...] man dies only as a consequence of Adam's sin; and if, by baptism, this sin is erased, how is it that Christians are still subject to death?
1766
Civil history, which by its importance and authority, holds the first rank among human writings.
1623
Leibniz [...] claims that, although the same quantity of motion does not persist, the force always remains the same.
1738
Our character is still us; and because one has taken pleasure in splitting the person into two parts [...] it would be somewhat childish to conclude that one of the two selves weighs on the other.
1889
Madonna and Child with Saint Catherine of Siena and a Carthusian Donor
ca. 1411–24
For the reality of life is not sensation, it is activity—I mean activity both in thought and in action.
1934-1942
Why be surprised [...] if the divinity judges it more advantageous for me to leave this life at this very moment?
4th century BC
Certain losses communicate to the soul a sublimity that makes it abstain from all complaint and walk in silence, like tall black cypresses.
1881
It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by constituting the struggle.
1847
Still Life: A Banqueting Scene
ca. 1640–41
Through thought, human intelligence is open to error. However, every error sooner or later brings with it a whole series of evils [...].
1819
The most powerful and self-mastered State is the State which is founded upon and directed by reason.
1677
Is it not better to break with fortune at the right time, than to be struck by an unforeseen blow that throws one from the top of the wheel?
1636
Great thoughts come from the heart.
1747
Marble head of a woman wearing diadem and veil
425–400 BCE
To work, therefore, is to act in order to procure a thing that one needs.
1776
Instead of keeping her in distrust of herself, they seek [...] to increase her confidence in her own strength.
1835-1840
The happiness of others is like a house that rises higher than their own. If they could remove what obstructs their view, they would ask for nothing more.
c. 72-126 AD
It is folly to want to shed light on an ill for which there is no treatment that does not increase and worsen it [...].
1580
Marble portrait head of Antinoos
ca. 130–138 CE
Women, those mediocre and magical beings.
1926
There is only one way that leads there: to renounce all things that do not depend on our free will, to detach ourselves from them, to recognize that they are foreign to us.
c. 108 AD
All pursuit of an ideal is disastrous. [...] Every extreme position becomes false, all exaggerated obstinacy leads to ruin. Wisdom consists in staying in the center, neutral and indifferent.
4th century BC
But there is only one way, one path to learn to know, and that is to love.
1896
Bronze knife with ram's-head handle
ca. 1st century CE
What, indeed, is more fortunate than to be able [...] to converse with the most eloquent characters, with the best people who ever lived?
45 BC
All passions justify themselves: they constantly represent to the soul the object that stirs it, in the manner most suited to preserve and increase its agitation.
1674-1675
Pleasure and Pain are two Ideas, one or the other of which is joined to almost all our Ideas, both those that come to us by sensation and those that we receive by reflection.
1689
There are a thousand pleasant things that happen every moment; one enjoys them [...], but has the ingratitude to forget them.
1760
George IV (1762–1830), When Prince of Wales
1773
If there were no different interests, one would hardly feel the common interest, which would never find any obstacle: everything would go of its own accord, and politics would cease to be an art.
1762
One only acquires in order to spend.
1772
All laws are dead and allow themselves to be corrupted [...]. Everything thus comes down to making good living laws, that is, to making a good selection of capable individuals, endowed with good understanding and probity.
c. 1552-1553
The things that the celestial gods produce do not result from a free choice, but from a natural necessity, because they act, as parts of the universe, upon the other parts of the universe.
c. 253-270 AD
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE
Let us never judge a man's morals by the fervor of his zeal [...]. The most enormous crimes are, on the contrary, very apt to give birth to religious terror, and to increase superstition.
1757
[The arts] produce imitation by means of rhythm, language, and harmony, used separately or together.
c. 335 BC
We, animal creatures, are made human only by culture.
1777
If all individuals [...] are equally protected today, this softening of morals is due not to the appearance of a new penal rule, but to the extension of an old one.
1893
A Man with the Initials FM
1751
Power and hatred are two things [...] put together on earth.
62-65 AD
The prince who is the cause of another's greatness is himself ruined.
1855
Having no intention of pleasing me in this, he no longer cared about displeasing me in other things as well.
1643-1649
Men are not content with the obedience of women, they arrogate to themselves a right over their feelings. [...] they neglect nothing to enslave their minds.
1869
Portrait of a Woman
1775
Reason enlightens but does not lead: [add to this], when decisions contrary to it have become habitual.
1801
I heard the blessings that were given to the authors of an establishment so advantageous and so useful to the public.
1662
Those who maintain that from mere possible notions, ideas, or essences one can never infer actual existence [...] deny the possibility of the self-existent being.
Late 17th - early 18th century
Jesus wishes [...] to pave through humility the path that leads to glory.
1263-1264
Christ Healing the Sick
1742