The entire occupation of kings [...] relates to only two objects: to extend their domination abroad, and to make it more absolute within.
1762
Only he who transforms himself remains my kinsman.
1886
[He] saw all these adventures with a cool head.
1759
If I were to say more, it would amount to a compliment, and we have banished that enemy of sweet and easy conversations.
1643-1662
The Agony in the Garden
ca. 1504
Financial embarrassment = bankruptcy.
1830-1831
One gains public esteem through some extraordinary and brilliant action [...] the outcome of which covers you with glory and honor.
1513-1519
One can certainly offer a limited understanding a supply of rules [...], but the student must already possess the faculty to use them correctly himself.
1781
He who knows how to think, reigns visibly or invisibly over all those who only know how to speak or act.
1609
Marble grave relief with a funerary banquet and departing warriors
2nd century BCE
The most shameful reproach is to be accused of having a philosophy of words, not of deeds.
63-64 AD
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
Why are celibacy, fasting, macerations, self-denial, humility [...] and all monastic virtues rejected by all sensible men? It is because they lead to nothing.
1751
I cannot grant that sin or evil is something positive, much less that anything could exist or happen against the will of God.
1661-1676
Bronze bowl from a thymiaterion (incense burner)
late 4th century BCE
Whoever knows anything, knows above all things that he need not look far for examples of his Ignorance.
1689
I persist in thinking that man's thought consists only in feeling sensations, memories, judgments, and desires.
1801
We must seek methods of work [...] that stimulate the highest motives in workers [...] and give them maximum freedom without undermining order.
1934-1942
However, I fear—the meeting must have been a stormy one.
1926
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
ca. 1504
Providence is evidently the conviction that man has of the infinite value of his existence; it is religious idealism.
1841
If quickness of mind alone should not command in chief, it can at least command in second.
1636
The revolution [...] made the middle class a theoretically predominant class; [...] but, in practice, the supremacy of this class was far from being established.
1851-1852
It would be useful for those who engage in inventing new machines if they knew nothing more of this matter than what I have just written about it [...].
1637
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
Universal Providence consists in the universe being in conformity with Intelligence, and Intelligence being anterior to the universe, [...] not in time, [...] but because Intelligence precedes by its nature the world which proceeds from it.
c. 253-270 AD
A bad example is the most pernicious doctrine [...] for the indiscreet populace, who thinks that whatever evil is done and suffered is permissible.
c. 1552-1553
What is a man's opinion? The one that is habitual to him; it is the hypothesis to which he always returns, and not the one from which he has never departed.
1745
Until the time of Socrates, philosophy was confined to physics: and it was he [...] who first, by taking it from the moral side, gave it entry into private homes.
45 BC
Bronze phiale (libation bowl) with four swinging handles
ca. 550 BCE
Every person maintains that equality is dictated by justice, unless they think that utility requires inequality.
1861
Here as elsewhere, what exists is the particular and the individual, and the general is only a schematic expression of it.
1893
[...] it is supposed that this natural union could not be approved by heaven if the ceremonies of a priest did not render it valid.
1766
In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to step out of it.
1864-1866
Bronze thymiaterion (incense burner)
ca. 325–275 BCE
The ease of recalling a complex memory would be [...] in direct proportion to the tendency of its elements to spread out on the same plane of consciousness.
1919
[The gladiators never let] slip a word showing weakness or imploring pity, turn their back, or make even a movement that could make them suspected of cowardice.
1580
He who has not gotten to the bottom of things, however ancient he may be, is not in my eyes an authority [...].
4th century BC
We are, so to speak, innate to ourselves, and since we are beings, being is innate to us; and the knowledge of being is enveloped in the knowledge we have of ourselves.
1704
Bes
1st century BCE–1st century CE
If, indeed, there were an infinite body, [...] this body would not be in 'where' (ubi).
c. 1270
One must work without cease not to be mistaken, since one wishes without cease to be delivered from one's miseries.
1674-1675
When we believe attention is difficult to bear, it is because we mistake the fatigue of boredom and impatience for the fatigue of application.
1758
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
Ornament, flower-shaped mount for stone base
7000 BCE - 330 CE
If you long for a crown, take one of roses and place it on your head: it will surely be more graceful to behold.
c. 108 AD
What is presumption in the weak, is elevation in the strong.
1746
Where there are many well-to-do fortunes, there are far fewer revolutionary movements and dissensions.
c. 350 BCE
Nature gives us organs to warn us through pleasure of what we must seek, and through pain of what we must flee. But it stops there.
1754
Ear probe
7000 BCE - 330 CE