[Merchants] have as much need to sell as we have to buy.
1776
This [...] consideration shows us the cause of the different degrees of certainty in the various sciences.
1817
Constant obedience to the constitution must not appear to the citizens as slavery; on the contrary, they must find in it safeguard and happiness.
c. 350 BCE
The only way left, after such a violent revolution, to save liberty was to restrain it.
1893
Statuette of a horseman, 3
7th–6th century BCE
Women [...] are the music of life: they know how to accept and assimilate everything [...] frankly and with fewer reservations, to further embellish it with their sympathy.
1896
Any man who enters a tyrant's house becomes his slave, though he came there a free man.
100-120 AD
we have no clear idea of our soul.
1674-1675
Ah! must you not give me pity for pity, preserve what I love, when you have promised it?
1968
Still Life with Flowers and Fruit
1866
[Your actions] will teach that a wise, regular, irreproachable conduct should expect no reward from you.
59 BC
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.
1263-1264
According to [some], benevolence is but hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to betray trust.
1751
A religion that was clear would soon be finished; our sacred interpreters would have nothing to tell us if God had spoken too clearly.
1768
Portrait of a Man
1741
Would we think much, and would we think well, if we did not think in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs to us?
1786
Its [moral] binding force consists in the existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to violate our standard of right, and which [...] manifests itself [...] in the form of remorse.
1861
Through his abdication, Charles V in turn rose above fortune.
1636
Sensation has for its general condition that the universal animal be sympathetic to itself; without this, how could one thing partake in the power of another thing from which it is very distant?
c. 253-270 AD
Venice from the Bacino di San Marco
ca. 1765–75
Is there any person who is with you as constantly as yourself? Who has as many means to persuade you as yourself?
c. 108 AD
If I become aware of this loss of my faculties, and I displease myself, how could I still find pleasure in living?
4th century BC
I do not think [a book] is worth the trouble of reading.
1643-1649
I have seen beautiful and strong imaginations that promised much, and yet delivered nothing or very little.
c. 1763
Capriccio with St. Paul's and Old London Bridge
ca. 1745
A testimony has less force and authority, the more distant it is from the original truth. [...] as a tradition passes successively through more hands, it has ever the less strength and evidence.
1689
It is [...] vanity to wish to be other than we are; such a desire leads to nothing, it contradicts itself.
1580
What is presumption in the weak, is elevation in the strong.
1746
[To make a] critique of philosophy as a nihilistic movement.
1888
Portrait of a Venetian Senator
ca. 1525
The Berlin Insurrection.
1848
The usual flaw of the unfortunate is that they no longer believe in happiness.
c. 62 AD
Every harmony of interests conceals a latent or simply postponed conflict.
1893
[A] generosity [...] which is rare [...] in a first-rate mind, whose reputation usually shields it not only from the judgment of others, but even from its own.
1686
Pietà
ca. 1657–60
To have glory and youth at the same time is too much for a mortal. Our existence is so poor that its goods must be distributed more sparingly.
1851
By thinking to extirpate opinions with the sword, we act as with the Hydra, where for one head cut off, seven more would grow back.
c. 1552-1553
Only [the religious authority] would wait to recognize him, until time had secured on his head the crown that a disgrace could make fall.
1731
Adversity tears the soul, but happiness corrupts it.
1754
Saint Nicholas of Bari
mid-1430s
The ruler owes the nations truth as something useful, and freedom of the press as a means of discovering it.
1772
Before we can philosophize, we must live; and life demands that we put on blinders, that we look neither to the right nor to the left, but straight ahead.
1911
...all, conspiring to banish the void, exercised [...] that power of the mind, called Subtlety, [...] which, for the solution of real difficulties, gives only vain and baseless words.
1647
Their soul was a chaos like the new society.
1926
Marble head of a kouros (youth)
ca. 525–475 BCE
Those are truly antichrists who persecute honest people, friends of justice, because they are in disagreement with them.
1670
[The spirit of the Sage is] superior to heaven, to earth, to all beings, dwells in a body to which it is not attached, [...] and knows everything through global knowledge in its motionless unity.
4th century BC
We shall constantly slander one another [...] without being held back by any consideration.
16th century
to remain hidden and invisible, while at the same time being ignorant of nothing concerning others, was a thing that belonged rather to spirits [...] than to men.
1627
Statuette of a man ?
3rd–1st century BCE