Hope makes more dupes than skill.
1746
Excess of liberty, whether it be in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
c. 375 BC
Even if we could bring our intuition to its highest degree of clarity, we would not take a single step further towards knowing the nature of objects themselves.
1781
Conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the dissenting opinion is necessary to supply the rest of the truth of which the received doctrine realizes only a part.
1859
Portrait of a Man
1795
The social contract is [...] the basis of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this act that one must seek the nature of the society it forms.
1762
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
Does not the adage say: chiseling and polishing are not as good as letting nature act. [...] I let people do as they would, spontaneously, as nature operates.
4th century BC
The error [...] of all literary criticism [...] is to absolutely want to find the man in the work.
1926
María Teresa, Infanta of Spain
mid-17th century
We will command attention by promising to speak of important, new, extraordinary things, or of facts that concern the State or the audience itself.
86-82 BC
It [The bourgeoisie] made an apotheosis of the sword; the sword now governs it.
1851/1852
[...] the air, because it is invisible, is taken for empty space; but inasmuch as it is space, we conclude that it is a body [...].
1653-1662
Man alone has one [a face].
Mid-fourth century BC and 322 BC
Terracotta statuette of a woman
3rd century BCE
The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south, yet these two rivers spring from the same mountain, and are consequently driven by the same principle...
1751
I can cast a quick glance over all the centuries, all the countries, and consequently over all the follies of this small globe.
1734
What should the administration do in [a great] work? What should it let be done? What should it not do?
1864-1866
The general interest is the measure of the esteem in which we hold the mind, not the difficulty of the subject or the extent of the insights.
1773
Portrait of a Man
1537
There are acts that public opinion imposes, others that it leaves to private initiatives. The latter are therefore gratuitous and free.
1893
To say that God performs miracles is to say that he contradicts himself; that he denies the laws he has prescribed to nature; that he renders human reason useless [...].
1766
Paganism sacrificed bodies, whereas Christianity sacrifices souls.
1842-1845
There are those who mix in everywhere [...] the political reflections in which they delight, throwing themselves into all sorts of digressions.
1623
Terracotta head of a youth
early 3rd century BCE (?)
But the object that excited the most compassion and regret [...] was [the son], overwhelmed with grief and bursting into tears.
100-120 AD
A will that would always let itself be guided by chance would be scarcely better for the government of the universe than the fortuitous concourse of corpuscles.
1710
This translation is still preserved today in the library of the seraglio.
1855
An obviously inexorable and invincible oppression does not engender revolt as an immediate reaction, but submission.
1934-1942
Saint Bernardino Preaching from a Pulpit
ca. 1470–75
A solid and sure judgment, and a spirit all of fire, are [...] qualities that attract the name of prodigy to the man in whom they are united.
1636
It would be necessary for all men to be perfectly wise, so that, knowing what they ought to do, one could be assured of what they will do.
1643-1649
Apposition is the contact of bodies at their surfaces, as in heaps of wheat.
c. 253-270 AD
Before the time of the Maccabees there was no canon of the holy books: it was the Pharisees of the Second Temple period [...] who, on their private authority, chose among many others and consecrated the books we now possess.
1670
Bronze statuette of Tyche/Fortuna
ca. 1st century BCE–1st century CE
One must clearly distinguish the force and beauty of words from the force and evidence of reasons.
1674-1675
All these sublime thoughts which rise above the clouds and penetrate even to the Heavens, draw their origin from thence: [...] the Soul [...] does not go beyond the Ideas that Sensation or Reflection present to it.
1689
Movable wealth only multiplies with the help of land-based wealth.
1776
It is by the one and same virtue of charity that we love God and our neighbor, with this sole difference that we love God for God's sake, and we love our neighbor and ourselves for God's sake.
1263-1264
Young Girl in a Pink-and-Black Hat
ca. 1891
It is [...] impossible for the word love, for example, to awaken exactly the same idea in the mind of a child or an old man, of a passionate or timid woman...
1817
[...] they feign occupations or exaggerate them, and the obstacle comes from themselves.
63-64 AD
We too must [...] be able to converse with ourselves; to do without others; to need no distraction; to reflect [...] on our relationship with the rest of the world.
c. 108 AD
It is only strong passions that lead to [...] the conception of those great ideas that are the astonishment and admiration of all centuries.
1758
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
ca. 1504
When [the artist] looks at a thing, he sees it for its own sake, and not for his. He no longer perceives simply in order to act; he perceives for the sake of perceiving — for nothing, for pleasure.
1911
[...] an excessive sorrow [...] must stupefy the soul to the point of taking away all its freedom of action.
1580
When, in a painful and dreadful dream, anguish reaches its peak, it awakens us [...]. The same thing happens in the dream of life, when supreme anxiety pushes us to break its thread.
1851
To see a million men serve miserably, with their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a greater force, but [...] enchanted and charmed by the name of one man alone.
c. 1552-1553
Olivier Journu (1724–1783)
1756