The copyist, unintelligent or inattentive, has lost [...] the author's meaning.
c. 1552-1553
As for me, although old age is gaining on me, I will not blush to reconcile myself with my dear Cicero, whom I had abandoned for too long.
45 BC
Religion is the art of intoxicating men with enthusiasm, to prevent them from dealing with the evils with which their rulers overwhelm them here below.
1766
Who knows what he should esteem, or despise, or hate, if he does not know what is good or what is evil?
1746
The Missionary's Adventures
ca. 1883
...the moral law demands that the greatest good of which we are capable be realized.
1793
The mystery of Christ or of the personal God.
1841
Springs gush forth naturally. The superior man is so spontaneously. The sky is high, the earth is thick, the sun and moon are bright, all this without a formula.
4th century BC
Democracy there is less a regular form of government than a weapon that has been habitually used to destroy [...] the old society.
1864-1866
Bronze statuette of a goddess
1st–2nd century CE
Laughter [...] is a kind of joy.
c. 1660
As [...] the one who established [these predicaments] has no great authority [...] it follows that everyone today can think and say what he pleases about them.
c. 1270
[...] up, down, front and back, right and left correspond in man to these positions in the universe; a privilege of man.
Mid-fourth century BC and 322 BC
The thirst for pity is a thirst for self-enjoyment, and this at the expense of one's fellow human beings.
1878
Saint John on Patmos
ca. 1511
How many gentlemen do we have in France who, by their own account more than by that of others, are of royal blood!
1580
The more general and indeterminate the rules of conduct and thought, the more individual reflection must intervene to apply them to particular cases.
1893
The art that applies to one, applies to many, and reciprocally.
End of the 4th century BC
A great heart, far from being puffed up by the most astonishing successes, constantly sighs for more.
1636
The Judgment of Solomon
1640s
To maintain the meaning of words, to yield to the force of things only at the last extremity, such must be the role of those who write.
1926
The scholastic definition [...] has the flaw of applying just as well to the conditions of a fact as to its cause.
1839
The highest degree of our knowledge is intuition, without reasoning.
1689
If we could trace all primitive nouns back to their source, we would find that there is no abstract noun that does not derive from some adjective or verb.
1746
Gold lion-head pendant
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
But what if someone surprised me alone and killed me! — Fool! it would not be you he would kill, but your body!
c. 108 AD
How many events it is enough to predict for them to take place.
1623
I succeed in being employed, [...] in which case I should be less suspect.
1513-1527
Natural man is everything for himself; he is the numerical unit, the absolute whole [...]. Civil man is only a fractional unit that depends on the denominator [...].
1762
Saints Matthew and Francis
ca. 1435
We do not see material objects in themselves. We do not see them immediately and directly, since we often see ones that do not exist.
1707
...which lanterns shall have multiple lights, to be distinguished from those of the citizens, and to be recognized at once and without difficulty as being for hire.
1662
In the darkness one sees fire, the stars, and their shapes. No one could claim that, in this case, the forms of objects, being imprinted on the dark air, are transmitted to the eye.
c. 253-270 AD
If one body were to attract another without the intervention of any means, it would not be a miracle, but a contradiction; for it would be to suppose that a thing acts where it is not.
1715-1716
Statuette of Herakles
3rd century BCE–2nd century CE
All things considered, the temperate person is at the end of the year at least as happy as the glutton.
1772
The weakest of all souls are those whose will [...] allows itself to be continually carried away by the present passions, which [...] put the soul in the most deplorable state it can be.
1649
What are the duties of man? To make himself happy. From which derives the necessity of contributing to the happiness of others, or, in other words, of being virtuous.
1763
If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to opinion, never rich.
63-64 AD
Saint John on Patmos, Madonna and Child Enthroned, and Death of the Virgin; The Crucifixion
1303
At first he bore his misfortune with constancy; soon he grew accustomed to it and suffered it without difficulty.
100-120 AD
The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
1847
The proof is that several of these definitions are equally acceptable, even though they do not say the same thing.
1900
It is not the violent struggle between different parts of the truth that is the formidable evil, but the quiet suppression of one half of the truth.
1859
Wall painting: frieze supporting trellis, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase
last decade of the 1st century BCE
The cause of all our errors is the infidelity of our memories, just as the basis of all the certainty we are capable of is the invincible truth of our present feeling.
1805
The republican spirit, the spirit of equality...
May 1774 - Dec 1775
The ambition of one man is not that of another [...] but the humanity of one man is that of all others, and the same object excites this sentiment in all men.
1751
To be revolutionary, is it to call for with one's wishes and to help with one's actions all that can [...] lighten or lift the weight that crushes the mass of men, [...] to refuse the lies [...]?
1934
Limestone statuette of a temple boy
4th century BCE