It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by constituting the struggle.
1847
[...] the essential character of the human will, its horror vacui: it needs a goal—and it will rather will nothingness than not will at all.
1887
By natural right [...] we understand nothing other than the laws of the nature of each individual, according to which we conceive that each of them is naturally determined to exist and to act in a determined manner.
1670
There are as many differences of opinion, and as many burning discussions, about what is just as about what is useful to society.
1861
Head of a Black African youth
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
It is solely the overly prolonged duration of power that leads to tyranny in oligarchic and democratic States.
c. 350 BCE
Those who [...] asserted that nothing can be known with certainty, [propagate] a discouraging opinion.
1620
[...] idleness, mother of corruption [...].
1580
Of all the passions, the one that goes least to the heart is admiration.
1674-1675
Terracotta appliqué
3rd century BCE
[...] our advantage, for us, is to be despised, to be rejected, to be slandered, to have injustices done to us. [...] but as for us, it is a very great happiness.
1643-1662
Friendship is a sacred name, it is a holy thing; [...] There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice.
c. 1552-1553
For a hundred years, people have tried to equate two states that have little in common: the state of love and the state of marriage.
1926
He is a man [...] devoid of common sense, and has even less courage.
1518
The Villa Loredan, Paese
early 1780s
With regard to great faults, one does not suppress the knowledge of them; one only suspends it for a time.
1636
[The power] wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of [the citizens'] happiness [...]; why can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?
1835-1840
The sole defect, in a sense, of all works, is that they are too long.
1746
I will set forth [...] the thoughts by which I am persuaded I have arrived at a [...] knowledge of the truth, in order to see if, by the same reasons that have persuaded me, I can also persuade others.
1641
Limestone statuette of a beardless male votary with a wreath of leaves
late 5th or early 4th century BCE
Help can come to us from those who are no longer with us as well as from the living.
63-64 AD
It is the characteristic of bad faith to cling to the words and the letter, without considering the intention.
86-82 BC
Alternately, the idea gives birth to the sign, and the sign gives birth to the idea.
1801
Reverie seems to be nothing other than following certain thoughts for the pleasure one takes in them, without any other purpose, which is why it can lead to madness.
1704
Engraving
18th century
The Roman Empire [...] turned its arms against itself, less because of the ambition of its leaders [...] than because of the avarice and licentiousness of the soldiers, who drove them out one after another, as one nail drives out another.
100-120 AD
One only truly has a sound mind in those fields upon which one has more or less meditated.
1758
Suffering is the foundation of all life.
1819
Neither intelligence nor pleasure can be the good, if they are lacking something.
c. 360 BC
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen
1896
It is activity during life that causes death. [...] Life and death are common things. Is there any reason to be so concerned about them?
4th century BC
Truth is simple and clear; the marvelous always announces falsehood.
1766
Believe in a good god, and be good.
1775
Ulysses is true wisdom, which, without being captivated by material charms [...], turns all its desires towards the heavens.
c. 253-270 AD
Limestone statue of a lion
ca. 700–650 BCE
[A quibbler is one] who, out of foolishness or malice, confuses everything to obscure everything.
1763
[...] wherever we believe it is important for us to know the truth [...], we never proceed lightly. But when it comes to the [...] cause of our happiness or our misfortune, [...] only then do we act lightly and at random!
c. 108 AD
A government that uses words and thoughts too lofty for it, far from receiving any brilliance from them, discredits them and makes itself ridiculous.
1943
Jesus Christ is the end of the law [...], the end that perfects and not the end that brings death.
1263-1264
Bronze strainer with openwork handle
5th century BCE
The entire outer man corresponds [...] to the entire inner man.
1766
My soul, proof against fortune, has known no true good or evil except those that do not depend on it.
1782-1789
Is it not natural that, weary of all the evils [...], they should at last persuade themselves that it is lawful for them to repel force with force, and to take up arms for the defense of their rights.
1686
In all moral determinations, the circumstance of public utility is always what is principally in view.
1751
Marble bust of a bearded man
ca. 150–175 CE
It is movement in space that creates time in human consciousness. Without movement, no time.
1890
Because of this analogy [with living bodies], we propose to call the solidarity that is due to the division of labor, organic.
1893
What beauty and magnificence are for the artist, the prosaic and ordinary being cannot conceive.
1896
Joining to vision a judgment that we confuse with it, we form the idea of a convex figure, although in fact our eyes only represent a plane to us.
1746
Heroic Landscape with Rainbow
1824