[...] from the day when, given entirely to you, the whole world disappeared for me.
1718-1778
[...] when they [minds] have once acquiesced to false opinions [...], it is just as impossible to speak to them intelligibly as to write legibly on a paper already scribbled over with writing.
1772
Each party kicks from behind at the one driving forward and leans over the one driving back. No wonder that in this ridiculous posture it loses its balance.
1851/1852
What I call 'my present' encroaches upon both my past and my future.
1896
Steatite spindle whorl
ca. 2400–1900 BCE
Genius is less the prize of attention than a gift of chance, which presents to all [...] happy ideas from which only he who [...] is attentive to seize them profits.
1758
Neither intelligence nor pleasure can be the good, if they are lacking something.
c. 360 BC
No one can surrender [...] their natural rights and the faculty within them to reason freely and to judge things freely; no one can be compelled to do so.
1670
One should use syllogism with dialecticians rather than with the common people; and conversely, one should rather use induction with the common people.
End of the 4th century BC
The Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1470
It is, in effect, a matter of deciding whether the severe economy of a simple and rustic life can defend itself against luxury and license.
81 BC
These swallows that go [...] are the messengers of spring.
1546/1563
When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
1864-1866
Genius! Its glory grows unceasingly; and [...] everything connected to its memory is welcome.
63-64 AD
Limestone statue of a lion
ca. 700–650 BCE
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are familiar.
1859
Instead of speaking of a love of truth, it is better to speak of a spirit of truth in love.
1943
By natural reason alone, we can indeed make many conjectures to our advantage and have fine hopes, but by no means any assurance.
1643-1649
Passions always try to justify themselves, and they persuade us insensibly that we are right to follow them.
1674-1675
Portrait of a Woman
1560
Temperation is the mutual and corresponding extension of two or more bodies, with their qualities also remaining.
c. 253-270 AD
The words of a wise man can easily bring a misguided people back to the right path [...], whereas no voice dares to rise to enlighten a wicked prince; there is only one remedy, the sword.
1855
Decadence: what a mistake! Never was there so much extravagance, perhaps because there was never so much vitality.
1926
The entire outer man corresponds [...] to the entire inner man.
1766
Terracotta statuette of a veiled woman
2nd century BCE
According to [some], God needs to wind up his watch from time to time, otherwise it would cease to work.
1715-1716
An outburst, escaped in certain moments, can put the hero on the same level as the common man; it can even put the latter above the former.
1636
If we are deprived of the sweetness of caressing our wives, what will console us for the harshness of our masters?
1775-1784
Every society is a moral society.
1893
Marble statue of a member of the imperial family
27 BCE–68 CE
By the benefit of the communication of ideas, each person finds themselves acting, reflecting, and choosing for all; everything that is discovered becomes a common good, a source of new progress.
1801
Able to live in retirement with safety and honor, [he] did not cease to expose himself to danger by fighting the most powerful of men.
100-120 AD
Wagner's music, if stripped of the protection of theatrical taste, [...] is simply bad music, perhaps the worst music ever made.
1888
A thing can be in a place in two ways, namely, definitively and circumscriptively.
c. 1270
Limestone statuette of a boy holding a bird
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
There reigned neither tranquility nor tumult, but a silence that marked at once fear and indignation.
1754
Pure Nothing can no more produce a real Being than the same Nothing can be equal to two right angles.
1689
Madness admits [...] the exercise of all operations; but it is a disordered imagination that directs them.
1746
If, then, by this word void, we mean a privation of all body, [...] this presupposition that a space is void destroys and contradicts itself.
1653-1662
Limestone statuette of a boy holding a duck
late 4th century–3rd century BCE
The Christian heaven or personal immortality.
1841
When I make a wheel, [...] if I go at it, I know not how, the result will be in line with my ideal [...]. It's a knack that cannot be expressed.
4th century BC
If one could castrate all scoundrels, throw all foolish women into a cloister, [...] one would soon see the birth of a generation that would restore to us, and more, the age of Pericles.
1819
Good and evil, both natural and moral, are only a matter of taste and feeling.
1742
A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase
1662
[God] has given you these faculties free, independent, and liberated from all external constraint; he has put them entirely at your disposal.
c. 108 AD
It is a similar vanity to desire to be something other than what we are.
1580
What is beautiful and great but that which nature has made? What is deformed and weak but that which it has produced in its harshness?
1746
Others hastily stitch together small accounts and small commentaries, from which they form a fabric full of inequalities.
1623
Statuette of a girl
ca. 550–500 BCE