The inclinations of the will and the passions of the heart [...] almost always hide the truth, and only let it appear tinged with false, flattering colors.
1674-1675
One must avoid being despised and hated.
1855
Thus, only my hypothesis remains, that is, the way of harmony.
1696
The "apparent world" is the only real one: the "true world" is merely added by a lie...
1888
Seated goddess (Aphrodite?)
4th–3rd century BCE
Does it not seem to you that I have been preparing for it all my life? [...] By living without committing the slightest injustice, which is, in my eyes, the most beautiful way to prepare a defense.
4th century BC
I abandoned my homeland so that it would not be stained with the blood of citizens.
September 57 BC
Often the best course of action only becomes clear in hindsight, while at the time the matter was obscure.
329-323 BC
I confess, children are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. [...] Their parents have a sort of rule over them [...] but it is only temporary.
1690
Marble statue of a member of the imperial family
27 BCE–68 CE
He blindly follows what he believes to be my opinions [...] even though he does not understand them; thus he blindly contradicts them [...].
1643-1649
The understanding [...] is the medium of motives, that is, the intermediary through which they act on the will, which is, properly speaking, the very core of man.
1839
[...] they feign occupations or exaggerate them, and the obstacle comes from themselves.
63-64 AD
A reasonable man sees only emptiness, nothingness, and folly [in these chimeras].
17th century
Charles de Saint-Radegonde, called Charles Coguin, Abbot of Anchin
ca. 1511–20
Its members sanctioned, or rather restored, the obnoxious privileges of feudalism, thereby betraying the liberty and the interests of the peasantry.
1851-1852
There is no ferocious animal more cruel than man when he has the power to satisfy his passion.
100-120 AD
Either he is healthy, or he is sick; but he is not healthy, therefore he is sick.
c. 1270
All this has not always [...] been seen very clearly, if the observers had not been preoccupied with prior prejudices.
1817
Marble forepart of a left sandaled foot
1st or 2nd century CE
When our [thing] is thus regulated and reformed, it will seem entirely new [...]. The abuses drove them away, and the reformation would call them back.
c. 1552-1553
Virtues derive from the soul's primitive foundation; vices are born from the soul's commerce with external things.
c. 253-270 AD
Providence is evidently the conviction that man has of the infinite value of his existence; it is religious idealism.
1841
It is sad that none of the calculations of the ancient secular authors agree with our sacred authors.
1764
Pietà
ca. 1657–60
One will thus be better able to judge the direction that we would like to try to give to sociological studies.
1895
We only fall into more errors because we acquire more knowledge.
1755
The continuation of the righteousness of the faithful is nothing other than the continuation of the infusion of grace, and not a single grace that endures forever.
1656-1657
Even in justice, all that goes beyond a simple death seems to me pure cruelty.
1580
María Teresa, Infanta of Spain
mid-17th century
It awakens no passion, neither contempt, nor hatred, nor indignation, nor pity [...].
1741-1784
I cannot bring myself to answer a work before having read it, nor to consider myself beaten before having been attacked.
1750
Nothing better shows the degradation into which local liberties had fallen than this eternal upheaval of their laws, to which no one seems to pay attention. This mobility alone would have been enough to destroy in advance [...] all local patriotism.
1856
Impossibility is the door to the supernatural. One can only knock on it. It is another who opens.
1947
The Fair at Bezons
ca. 1733
[David] was rebellious, lecherous, an adulterer, a murderer, etc., but he was very devout and very submissive to the Priests, which earned him the name of a man after God's own heart.
1768
He who approaches criticism without having prepared himself with extensive studies [...] will fatally be led to neglect substance for form, the idea for the word.
1882
Either science or poetry: there is no middle ground.
1926
Some have spoken all their lives without saying anything... Some, who were silent their whole lives, have spoken a great deal.
4th century BC
The Three Graces
1807
I appeal to my courage and my sword.
1636
Every person maintains that equality is dictated by justice, unless they think that utility requires inequality.
1861
[The Stoic Sage] will be a man preoccupied with being, and no longer with seeming; and the basis of the doctrine will no longer be pride, but a profoundly religious sentiment.
c. 108 AD
Belief in prejudice passes for common sense in the world.
18th century
Terracotta statuette of an actor
late 5th–early 4th century BCE
The most generous patriot and the most sordid miser, the most magnanimous hero and the most cowardly man, in all their actions, equally have in view their own interest and personal happiness.
1751
To accomplish great things, one must live as if one were never to die.
1747
We can regard science as a kind of monster, since it excites the admiration, or rather the stupid astonishment of the ignorant who see it as a sort of prodigy.
1609
Nature, considered materially, is therefore the sum of all objects of experience.
1783
María Teresa (1638–1683), Infanta of Spain
1651–54