I cannot [...] be your friend and your flatterer at the same time.
100-120 AD
Before the establishment of a legal and public state, individuals, peoples, and States can have no guarantee against violence from one another [...].
1797
Who does not see, in these sublime counsels, the language of enthusiasm, of hyperbole? Are these marvelous counsels not made to discourage man, and to cast him into despair?
1766
However, who can be sure of what goes on in the hearts of kings, and of what determines their will?
1746
Two marble portrait heads from a relief
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
A social fact can only be called normal for a given social species, in relation to a given phase of its development.
1895
It is not peace, but war, schism, that is to the taste of most.
1623
The decisive test of a heroic heart is when it is free to take revenge on an enemy at will.
1636
Only a misunderstanding can set us against each other [...] whereas in reality these two existences are in agreement and are but one.
1819
Terracotta head with wreath
ca. 600–480 BCE
I know that we must suffer [...] the wrongs of our parents. But I also think that one must suffer what can be suffered, and hide what can be hidden.
66 BC
I prefer to discover a single new etiology than to obtain the crown of the king of Persia!
1841
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
Some have spoken all their lives without saying anything... Some, who were silent their whole lives, have spoken a great deal.
4th century BC
Pendant in the form of a fish
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Three things inspire confidence in a speaker, independently of demonstrations: good sense, virtue, and benevolence.
329-323 BC
The man is nothing, the work is everything.
1888
The more the merchant provinces need sustenance, the more they demand from the agricultural provinces; and, consequently, they make agriculture flourish there.
1776
Do not love one another as men who seek only to corrupt [...] but love one another as those who love each other because they are gods, and sons of the Most High.
1263-1264
Limestone relief of a youth, from a funerary building
ca. 300 BCE
In the innumerable multitude of ideas, it is impossible for us to discover one that does not originate [...] in our sensations.
1817
If I can [...] by resorting to paper, make some honest man speak what I feel, my spirits, fed by this freedom, immediately regain new strength.
1574
Men are indifferent regarding the stability of the earth [...] but they are not at all indifferent to these opinions when they are upheld by those they hate.
1674-1675
[...] one must either try to uproot an abuse, at the risk of sudden ruin, or let it grow, and bow under the yoke of inevitable servitude.
1513-1519
Leisure Time in an Elegant Setting
ca. 1663–65
One cannot preserve old grace except by acquiring new grace; otherwise, one will lose what one thinks one holds, like those who, wishing to enclose the light, enclose only darkness.
1656-1657
Woe to the harsh and barbarous man who would refuse a citizen even the consolation of complaining! The complaint [...] is always legitimate.
1772
Where has one ever seen men without flaws, without desires, without passions? Do we not carry within ourselves the seed of all vices?
1750
Justice [...] means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.
c. 375 BC
Limestone statuette of a female votary
3900 BCE - 100 CE
The principal effect of all the passions in men is that they incite and dispose their soul to want the things for which they prepare their body.
1649
It is healthy not to live with those who are unlike us and have different tastes from our own.
63-64 AD
If one has a criterion for good other than the good itself, one loses the notion of the good.
1940
The love that God has for me is nothing other than my own self-love deified and personified.
1841
A Peasant Woman Picking Fleas off a Dog
ca. 1626–27
if you impose [your beliefs] on those who do not find them conformable [...], you yourself are a heretic, if for dogmas that cannot be fundamental, you cause a separation.
1686
The question is whether, in certain cases, when it is reasonable to act, different possible ways of acting cannot be equally reasonable.
1715-1716
I do not want it to be some trifle, but the correctness of our judgments, that produces this effect on us.
c. 108 AD
He would rather die at the hands of the Turks than be their prisoner in any way.
1731
Head and neck of a marble figure
2700–2300 BCE
Truth, in the great practical interests of life, is above all a matter of combining and reconciling extremes.
1859
It must be admitted that evil is but a defect of good (éllipsis toû agathoû).
c. 253-270 AD
It is without doubt a beautiful harmony when doing and saying go together.
1580
This is what [censors] are for. They serve a purpose.
1926
Bronze pendant in the form of a paired couple
8th century BCE
[The popular leader] is the slave of the majority: he follows its will, its desires, its half-discovered instincts, or rather he intuits them and runs to place himself at its head.
1835-1840
What better could one imagine today?
1765-1769
[The powerful], yielding to the natural inclinations of man, will strive to preserve and increase, if possible, their rights.
1677
The universe is vaster than our mind; life is short, education is long, truth is infinite.
1882
The Seine: Morning
1874