You know, sir, [...] what it is to be a man wounded in his most delicate part.
1758
[A certain] mobility of impressions [...] stems from one's very nature and not from external causes.
1926
[...] what I first took for a passing delirium will be the destiny of my life.
1761
If you make reason a prisoner under the domination of faith, why do you not place your own nature in the custody of Christian virtue?
1842-1845
Cavalier and Shepherd
1747
We no longer know how to forgive [...], and even the practice of condemning without a hearing has prevailed among us.
79 BC
From peace emanate the speculations of the great Sages and the actions of the great kings; non-intervention brings fame; abstraction raises one above all.
4th century BC
Sickness is the natural state of the Christian.
1670
In the Christian religion, everything seems abandoned to the imagination, whims, and arbitrary decisions of its ministers [...].
1766
Marble cinerary chest with lid
ca. 20–30 CE
Be resolved to serve no more, and you are at once free. [...] Do not support him any longer, and you will see him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
c. 1552-1553
One cannot reason perfectly about ideas without knowing their possibility.
Late 17th - early 18th century
Just by seeing you, he will know you are a man. Are you a good one? Are you a bad one? He will know, if he has the talent to distinguish the good from the bad.
c. 108 AD
Some, too fond of their own wit, audaciously invent facts.
1623
Terracotta statuette of a draped woman
2nd century BCE
To think often, and not to retain for a single moment the memory of what one thinks, is to think in a very useless manner.
1689
[...] by a habitual blindness, men do not see what exists; they see what their inclination represents to them.
1764
I am of the opinion that the best thing [...] is for all of us to seek out the best possible teacher together, first for ourselves, for we are in the greatest need of one.
c. 380 BC
[Our doctrine] teaches one to be free from hatred and contempt, to have for no one mockery, envy, or anger.
1661-1675
Head of the Virgin
ca. 1397
...perfect health [...] is the foundation of all other goods one can have in this life.
1643-1649
Das Kapital was only the first volume of a study that was intended to have three.
March 17, 1883
We invoke God and his aid in the conspiracy of our faults, and invite him to injustice.
1580
[The metaphysician] must penetrate the interior of things; and the true essence, the profound reality of a movement [...] can never be better revealed to him than when he performs the movement himself.
1922
The Madonna of Humility, the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Pietà
ca. 1465
It is entirely superfluous to forbid women what their constitution does not permit them. Competition is sufficient to prevent them from doing anything they cannot do as well as men, their natural competitors.
1869
As for living enough, neither years nor days have anything to do with it; what matters here is the soul.
63-64 AD
[...] you would imagine you had healed it with words, and that we would have this conversation together.
1764
Position is the order or disposition of parts in a place.
c. 1270
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE
Wherever a contract exists, it is subject to a regulation which is the work of society and not of individuals, and which becomes ever more voluminous and complicated.
1893
One shall spend the greater part of one's time in adornment and grooming, under penalty [...] of not being looked at by any member of the society.
16th century
Madmen do not pass for what they are among the mad who resemble them, but only among reasonable men.
1674-1675
Some are born posthumously.
1888
The Adoration of the Shepherds
probably after 1520
In Spain, they ask: Is he a grandee of the first class? in Germany, Can he enter the chapters? in France, Is he in favor at court? in Holland, How much gold does he have? in England, What kind of man is he?
1758
What is there that one cannot find in the knowledge of man?
1746
Each man is ordinarily such as he pleases to be, according to the inclinations to which he abandons himself and the nature of his soul.
c. 253-270 AD
Whoever takes up the sword will perish by the sword. And whoever does not take up the sword [...] will perish on the cross.
1947
Santa Maria della Salute
mid- to late 1760s
Thus was Rome taken in a surprising manner, and saved in a manner more surprising still.
100-120 AD
To say that a thing has value is to say that we esteem it to be good for some use. This esteem is what we call value.
1776
If we admit disinterested benevolence in the inferior species, by what rule of analogy can we refuse it in the superior?
1751
In these perilous encounters, courage is a good escort.
1636
Statuette of a youth with duck
900 BCE - 100 BCE
General ideas do not attest to the strength of human intelligence, but rather to its insufficiency.
1835-1840
Only individuals exist in nature.
1801
There is only one thing that does not disappear [...], it is the concept. It is in it [...] that all the knowledge of experience must be deposited, and it alone is capable of guiding us in life.
1819
Man neither wants nor knows how to obey. From childhood, he contracts this lack of discipline [...]. On the other hand, extreme poverty is no less degrading. Thus, poverty prevents one from knowing how to command, and it only teaches one to obey as a slave.
c. 350 BCE
Still Life: A Banqueting Scene
ca. 1640–41