Wisdom sets limits, even for knowledge.
1888
The union of the mind with the body infinitely debases man; and it is today the principal cause of all his errors and all his miseries.
1674-1675
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
Wherever fear reigns, one finds, in effect, the same good faith.
1855
Stucco relief panel
2nd half of 1st century CE
The object of government is not to make citizens slaves, but to enable them to freely perform the actions that are best.
1661-1675
In aristocracies, the master often exercises, even without his own knowledge, a prodigious empire over the opinions, habits, and mores of those who obey him.
1835-1840
Drunkenness is a state that predisposes to passions, because it increases the vividness of sensory representations, while on the contrary weakening abstract thought [...].
1839
[Goods] circulate among several nations as they would within a single one; and they are sold in all markets as if they were sold in a single common market.
1776
Bronze statuette of a priest or offrant
3rd–1st century BCE
The best course is therefore to receive him and have him killed [...]. A dead man does not bite.
100-120 AD
All good maxims are in the world, [...] one only has to apply them; but that is very difficult.
1746
I prefer Scythia with you to the crown of Babylon without you.
1768
As a great number gives rise to disorder, I believe the best would be to have only two or three associates.
1675
The Conversion of Saint Paul
1440
The property of relatives is that by definitively knowing one, one definitively knows the other.
c. 1270
He whose mind is on taking, no longer thinks of what he has taken. Covetousness has nothing so proper to it as to be ungrateful.
1580
Sunlight has always been regarded as the best possible image of God's grace [...].
1962
If, on the contrary, you suppose that he fears everything, you make him a coward.
4th century BC
Marble statue of a kouros (youth)
ca. 590–580 BCE
For every solution, [the ancients] addressed the root, the origin, the Principle that contains them all; and it is this high-level view that made their government superior.
4th century BC
The moral fact proper does not consist in the act conforming to the rule, but in the rule itself. Now, there is no rule where there is no obligation.
1893
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head [...].
c. 49 AD
A doctor, a judge, or a publicist may have many fine rules in their heads [...] and yet easily fail in the application of these rules, because they lack natural judgment.
1781
Two Young Peasant Women
1891–92
My spirits, fed by this freedom [to write], regain new strength.
1574
I would rather die than slavishly beg for life and be granted an existence much more dreadful than death.
4th century BC
this excessive disinterestedness, which led them to defy the public, [...] was also one of the causes of their belated success.
1926
That which passes through the air does not always affect it and often merely divides it.
c. 253-270 AD
Marine: The Waterspout
1870
A true image in itself still displeases me when it is not in its place, when nothing leads to it or prepares it.
1772
It is religion that hatched despots and tyrants; they made bad laws; their example corrupted the great; the great corrupted the people; and the debased people became wretched slaves.
1766
All the principles of modern charity, all its general precepts, even the commandment to love one's enemies, are found in the Discourses of Epictetus.
c. 108 AD
To leave [one's country] to evade one's duty [...] the moment the fatherland needs us [...] would be criminal and punishable; it would no longer be retirement, but desertion.
1762
Bathsheba at Her Bath
ca. 1700
'The artist stands before his finished work of art as before an enigma, about which he can fall into the same errors as others'.
1896
There can be unjust laws, and therefore law cannot be the supreme criterion of justice.
1861
One of the most powerful causes that have hindered the progress of science [...] is the recklessness of those whom excessive confidence in their own minds [...] has led to dogmatize about nature.
1620
Society is made more for the happiness of the wicked man than for that of man in general.
1770
Bronze handle of a hydria (water jar)
ca. 460–450 BCE
We can [...] place cleanliness among the virtues [...] it makes us agreeable to others & serves to win their friendship & goodwill.
1751
I continue the examination of my own existence, because it is the only one of which I am directly and immediately certain.
1817
This power cannot legitimately be an absolute and arbitrary power with regard to their lives and their property.
1690
Once the revolutionary career is entered upon, act with the greatest determination and take the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed uprising; it is lost before it has measured itself with its enemies.
1851-1852
Marble portrait bust of a boy
ca. 35–50 CE
It is more natural to look for the corruptor in the one who fears being condemned, than in the one who fears seeing the other acquitted.
66 BC
To imagine is not to remember. [...] the pure and simple image will only take me back to the past if it is indeed in the past that I have gone to seek it [...].
1896
We know that all that is not done by the spirit of God and by charity is done by cupidity, and that all that is done by cupidity is sin.
1643-1662
Another sign of a prosperity nearing its end is its long duration: fortune grows old [...] with the years, as we do.
1636
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1520–25