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Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

Français

It is only when we have understood how deeply [the artist] suffered [...] for an inaccessible ideal, that we begin to conceive who he was.

1896

The test fails: he despairs, becomes indignant, and contrasts the faithfulness of his dog with his forgetful beloved.

1926

Where truth and nature are, there also is prudence; where truth and nature are, there also is confidence.

c. 108 AD

Who could have ever imagined that a time would come when these people [the gravediggers] would wish for the health of the sick [...]?

1527

Ludovico Carracci

Madonna and Child with Saints

Madonna and Child with Saints

1607

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

c. 350 BCE

Where several [centers of power] enjoy liberty, it is not enough for one who wishes to pave a way to empire to seize just one in order to master the others.

1677

Any mixture whatsoever [...] absolutely requires measure and proportion, otherwise it is not a mixture, but a confusion.

c. 360 BC

The Romans have learned from their fathers to redeem their country with iron, and not with gold.

100-120 AD

Cypriot artist

Spearhead

Spearhead

3900 BCE - 100 CE

In what was believed [...] to be a simple idea, a single perception, there are many distinct parts; and [...] many different intellectual operations were necessary to assemble these parts.

1805

I reduce all of mechanics to a single proposition of metaphysics.

1686

To say: 'The world is God', or 'the world is the world', amounts to the same thing.

1851

Pythagoras, the first to have taken the name of philosopher...

45 BC

Italian (Umbrian) Painter

Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis

Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis

1495

Creation on God's part is an act not of self-expansion, but of withdrawal, of renunciation.

1942

To accomplish great things, one must live as if one were never to die.

1747

And he who is a terror to all, must be afraid of all.

c. 41 AD

[Witty remarks and bold actions] have often been like wings to suddenly reach the summit of greatness.

1636

Cypriot artist

Axehead

Axehead

ca. 3200–2000 BCE

Thus a second self is formed which covers the first, a self whose existence has distinct moments, whose states are detached from one another and are easily expressed in words.

1889

The Soul in that state is but [...] above the condition of a Mirror which, constantly receiving diverse Images or ideas, retains none of them.

1689

[...] the flatly ironic turn of phrase, which wounds even more than insult.

1765-1769

Wherever there is a real need to judge, a need inherent in reason itself [...], there is necessarily a maxim according to which we must pass our judgment; for reason wants to be satisfied.

1786

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

A Female Allegorical Figure

A Female Allegorical Figure

ca. 1740–50

To give up one's life for a dream is to value life for exactly what it is worth.

1580

If to have liberty it is necessary only to desire it, if only a simple act of will is needed, will there be any nation in the world that still deems it too expensive [...]?

c. 1552-1553

My only madness is to discern beauty, my only crime is to be sensitive to it. There is nothing in that of which I should be ashamed.

1762

It is not the province of the moralist to decide whether [men] reason more justly on this than on any other thing; it is enough that the original principles of censure or blame are uniform.

1751

Camille Corot

The Muse: History

The Muse: History

ca. 1865

The harmony of a concert that you listen to with delight must have the effect of a dreadful thunder on certain small animals.

1764

The single individual, who derives them through tradition and education, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting-point of his activity.

1851/1852

The Union is free and happy like a small nation, glorious and strong like a great one.

1835-1840

It is universally admitted that partiality is incompatible with justice; preference given to one person over another, when there is no reason to prefer them, is unjust.

1861

Etruscan artist

Pair of bronze handles with satyrs

Pair of bronze handles with satyrs

early 5th century BCE

There is no law in nature for the annihilation of any being, because nothingness has nothing beautiful or good, and the author of nature loves his work.

1674-1675

The intoxication of a high position makes [the leader] forget that he and his posterity may be the first victims of the power he builds.

1772

[Love] is that insatiable and infinite desire of the soul, [...] itself moved by a perpetual and never-satiated desire.

c. 253-270 AD

Since [...] social phenomena escape the experimenter's control, the comparative method is the only one suitable for sociology.

1895

Greek Artist, Attic

Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx

Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx

ca. 530 BCE

He preferred the care of his life to the care of the empire. How much more would he have preferred the care of his life to lesser cares?

4th century BC

The divisions of the sciences are not at all like different lines that coincide at a single point, but rather like the branches of a tree, which unite in a single trunk.

1623

All of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by which a pleasure in the sight of the soul becomes possible.

1886

[Propositions] are sometimes made by reason of concomitance, [...] sometimes by reason of cause.

c. 1270

Russian Painter

The Congregation of the Mother of God

The Congregation of the Mother of God

1570

However, until now, no one had yet attempted to do the same for Theology.

1768

Man is visibly made for thinking; that is all his dignity and all his merit.

1670

A person who might have an infinity of real causes for displeasure, but who would strive [...] to turn their imagination away from them, never thinking of them, except when the necessity of affairs would oblige it...

1643-1649

To feel the need for a thing, one must have some knowledge of it.

1754

Sébastien Bourdon

Portrait of a Young Boy

Portrait of a Young Boy

1636