Judgment [...] is the right determination of reason in the things to which judgment relates.
c. 1270
The moral principle that telling the truth is a duty, if taken in an absolute and isolated way, would make all society impossible.
1797
Barbarism reappears, but engendered within civilization itself and as an integral part of it; hence, leprous barbarism, barbarism as the leprosy of civilization.
1849
Those who possess [privileges] are constantly preoccupied by the fear of losing them or seeing them shared; and those who do not yet have them want to possess them at all costs...
1835-1840
Mademoiselle Nys
1899
Nature does nothing in vain, or for inconsiderable ends.
1689
The important thing is not that punishments be very harsh, but that they be inevitable.
1797-1798
The idleness of social circles is deadly, because it is of necessity; that of solitude is charming, because it is free and of will.
1782-1789
This is the way to ensure the superiority of the weaker argument.
329-323 BC
Bronze statuette of a youth
4th–3rd century BCE
Here is what an unknown author says about these worlds and this eternity, in a small paper that could easily be lost, and which it is perhaps good to preserve.
1764
To learn virtues is nothing more than to unlearn vices.
63-64 AD
We must mediterraneanize music.
1888
A general cannot trust ignorant soldiers [...], and, even if a new Hannibal were to lead them, he himself would succumb under such a burden.
1855
The Crucifixion
ca. 1325–30
Crime offends sentiments which, for a given social type, are found in all healthy consciences.
1893
The contradictions that the mind comes up against are the only realities, the criterion of the real. [...] Contradiction is the test of necessity.
1947
Finally, the price increase reached the point where the mines had to be abandoned. The costs [...] became so great that there was no longer any profit in exploiting them.
1776
To love one's enemies is therefore an impossible precept. One can abstain from doing harm to one who harms us; but love is a movement of the heart, which is stirred in us only at the sight of an object we judge to be favorable to us.
1766
The Trinity in an Initial B
Probably 1387
[To] measure exactly what this force must be [...], one must know that it acts in the same way as if it were dragging the weight on a circularly inclined plane [...].
1637
What then is the material of the philosopher? His cloak? No, his reason. And what is his goal? [...] To have a sound reason.
c. 108 AD
We must not forget that the point of view of critique is entirely different from that of psychology...
1896
No one being sufficiently wary of their own ignorance, we too easily believe that what we see in an object is all that can be seen in it.
1758
Terracotta statuette of a deer
1st quarter of the 5th century BCE
I hold that the invention of the form of syllogisms is one of the most beautiful [...] of the human mind. It is a kind of universal mathematics whose importance is not sufficiently known.
1704
[On this subject,] I leave much more than I give; it is a strange thing how fertile it is in properties. Everyone may try their hand at it.
1643-1662
Love consists in enjoying a thing and uniting oneself with it.
c. 1660
The two main pitfalls of heroism are unbridled anger and unrestrained greed: that is where reputation commonly runs aground.
1636
Marble bust of a bearded man
ca. 150–175 CE
Objects have no value in themselves; they are worth only the price that our soul attaches to them.
1742
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: to find that limit [...] is as indispensable [...] as protection against political despotism.
1859
Me, a good man, as they say! I am not. I was born fundamentally hard, wicked, perverse.
1775-1784
The brain, with its function of knowing, is basically just a lookout established by the will, to serve those of its ends which are located outside.
1819
Wall painting: frieze supporting trellis, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase
last decade of the 1st century BCE
As long as a Sage's doctrine has not been refuted, it is not over for him. [...] My doctrine is irrefutable, and I will not deviate from it for any persecution.
4th century BC
Fortune took care that this enterprise should not be sullied by the blood of any citizen.
100-120 AD
The condition [of advisors] is unfortunate [...] when they advise a present sacrifice whose advantages are certain and lasting but distant.
1623
Serenity, that Olympian calm [...] which allows one to master life, to look upon it from a height.
1926
Head of a comic figurine
late 4th–3rd century BCE
If a book bores me, I take up another, and only devote myself to it at hours when the boredom of doing nothing begins to seize me.
1580
We apply ourselves to chemistry, to astronomy, [...] as if we had nothing more important to know.
1746
A bad example is the most pernicious doctrine [...] for the indiscreet populace, who thinks that whatever evil is done and suffered is permissible.
c. 1552-1553
Your abstractions deceive you: what, do you think that there is an errant figure, a roundness, for example, that makes a ball round [...]?
1707
Limestone foot (left) with suspension hole
670 BCE - 330 CE
I never read Cicero [...] without being struck to the point of believing that there was something divine in the soul from which these works came to us.
45 BC
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
Nothing good or beautiful can exist without measure.
c. 360 BC
Philosophy is not a cosmo-theogony [...]. It is the science of silent spirits, of the principles and laws that direct nature and humanity.
1842-1845
Bronze statuette of a bearded man
late 6th century BCE