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Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

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What beauty and magnificence are for the artist, the prosaic and ordinary being cannot conceive.

1896

Crime is therefore necessary; it is bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life, and by that very fact it is useful.

1895

Man alone is something imperfect; he must find a second to be happy.

1643-1662

A communication of thought occurs that neither silence nor pretense can prevent.

1836

David Ryckaert III

Rustic Interior

Rustic Interior

1632

Passion is better than stoicism and hypocrisy; that being honest, even in evil, is better than losing oneself out of respect for conventional morality.

1876

The will is but a desire that is not fought, that has its object in its power, or at least believes it has [...].

1746

The first [precept] was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such.

1637

In youth, we live in a tumult of passions [...]. Later, the mind and heart open up and provide higher motives for activity.

1870

British Painter

Portrait of a Man

Portrait of a Man

1795

In the middle of a piece of amber [...] one sometimes sees insects that have been perfectly preserved there [...] as in a mausoleum.

1623

Is it not a Government where one man, commanding a multitude, is judge in his own cause, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases?

1690

Chrysippus taught that mixtion is broader than temperation.

c. 253-270 AD

The forms that give utility to raw materials give them value.

1776

Greek Artist

Limestone head of a girl

Limestone head of a girl

3rd century BCE

Self-knowledge [...] is the beginning of all human wisdom.

1797-1798

Poetry consists in imitation.

c. 335 BC

Fortune [...] claims the greatest part [of success]; and there is hardly any success that she does not claim as her own work.

46 BC

A simpler demonstration could be formed, without speaking of perfections, so as not to be stopped by those who deny that all perfections are compatible.

Late 17th - early 18th century

David Teniers the Younger

Peasants Dancing and Feasting

Peasants Dancing and Feasting

ca. 1660

God loves his work in us, but God would not have done in us what is worthy of his love if, before doing so, he had not loved us first.

1263-1264

Through his abdication, Charles V in turn rose above fortune.

1636

Most men seem incapable of concluding anything from the first principle of morality.

1674-1675

[The interpreters of prophecies] would be able to find in any writing whatever they wanted it to say.

1580

Carlo Crivelli

Madonna and Child

Madonna and Child

ca. 1480

The influence [...] of the morals of distinguished citizens on the multitude that [...] imitates them almost without noticing.

1741-1784

If I perceive this loss of my faculties, and I become displeasing to myself, how could I still find pleasure in living?

4th century BC

[The capitalist] sells not only what has cost him an equivalent, but also what has cost him nothing at all, although it has cost his worker's labor.

1865

All that can be said of domestic despotism applies to political despotism.

1869

Roman Artist

Bronze knife with ram's-head handle

Bronze knife with ram's-head handle

ca. 1st century CE

It is an extreme misfortune to be subject to a master of whom one can never be sure that he will be good, since it is always in his power to be evil when he pleases.

c. 1552-1553

Once the ether has vanished along with the privileged system and fixed points, there are only relative movements of objects with respect to one another.

1922

Necessity is an enemy for man as long as he thinks in the first person.

1951

Adversity is an opportunity for virtue.

c. 64 AD

Cypriot artist

Limestone statue of a lion

Limestone statue of a lion

ca. 700–650 BCE

Study yourself sometimes to behave as if you were sick, to know one day how to behave like a healthy man.

c. 108 AD

In Portugal, in Spain, in Roussillon, solemn dances are still performed today in honor of the mysteries of Christianity.

1764

What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life making pinheads?

1835-1840

[...] even attachment to parents is against pure nature, since it causes pleasure or sorrow.

4th century BC

Cypriot artist

Standing boy with a goose

Standing boy with a goose

3rd century BCE

[Our general ideas] have no other support in our mind than the word that represents them.

1817

Humanity [...] manages vanity, shows it the truth, but in the least offensive expressions.

1772

I knew that base passions seldom subjugate any but weak men, and have little hold on souls of a strong temper [...].

1782-1789

The proper pleasures of animality gradually lose their value; one strives to acquire moral and inner beauty, and the soul works to adorn itself with the perfections befitting a reasonable being.

1751

Roman Artist

Lower right corner of a marble sarcophagus, illustrating the discovery of Achilles by Odysseus on the island of Skyros

Lower right corner of a marble sarcophagus, illustrating the discovery of Achilles by Odysseus on the island of Skyros

ca. 160–180 CE

This power, divided between two rivals, maintained the balance [...]; but as soon as it was united and weighed entirely on a single point, it had no counterweight, and ended up shaking the republic and overthrowing it completely.

100-120 AD

[We charge our expert] with accompanying and leading them by the most convenient path.

1498

This so-called virtue [humility] is only fit to degrade man, to debase him in his own eyes, to stifle in him all energy and all desire to be useful to society.

1766

It is as impossible to dissolve such a bond, founded on a common love of truth, as it is not to embrace truth itself as soon as one perceives it.

1661-1676

Gustave Courbet

Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827–1910)

Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827–1910)

ca. 1852–57