One can only think and write while sitting.
1888
If I become aware of this loss of my faculties, and I displease myself, how could I still find pleasure in living?
4th century BC
The fate that actually befalls us rarely resembles the one we promised ourselves; at every step we take, we find our expectations disappointed.
1760
The testimony [...] may be unique, it may be anonymous; it exists, with its certificates of origin and authenticity.
1643-1662
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
ca. 1504
Bentham's dictum, 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one,' might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory commentary.
1861
Of Mixtion where there is total penetration.
c. 253-270 AD
It is the being itself that then consumes itself.
c. 350 BC
[Education] creates a new human being within us [...], made of all that is best in us, of all that gives value and dignity to life.
1922
Marble statue of a member of the imperial family
27 BCE–68 CE
He who says in the evening, 'I have lived,' can say in the morning, 'I am gaining a day.'
63-64 AD
The garment of the church is a garment of many colors.
1623
In their eyes, this expedition was to be a campaign of Slavic restoration and a war of extermination against the two invaders of what they considered Slavic soil: the Germans and the Magyars.
1851-1852
All that is great has the right to please the eyes and the imagination of men.
1758
Marble relief with Herakles carrying the Erymanthian Boar
27 BCE–68 CE
To have only reason on one's side is not to fight on equal terms; prejudice is almost always certain to triumph over it [...].
1743
By this means [man] no more increases his knowledge than he increases his riches who, taking a bag of counters [...] names one a Crown, another a Pound [...] without however being richer by a mite.
1689
A miracle is never reasonable; the more absurd it is, the more characteristic it is.
1926
Even misfortune has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune elevates a courageous spirit, and makes it gather all its forces which it was not using.
1746
Christ with a Staff
1650
As conditions become more equal, wages rise, and as wages are higher, conditions become more equal.
1835-1840
As for me, although old age is gaining on me, I will not blush to reconcile myself with my dear Cicero, whom I had abandoned for too long.
45 BC
The solidity and consistency that comes with age in the fibers of men's brains creates the solidity and consistency of their errors [...]. It is the seal that fastens their prejudices.
1674-1675
I knew nothing that I knew to belong to my essence, except that I was a thing that thinks, or a thing that has in itself the faculty of thinking.
1641
Flora
ca. 1654
It is the height of virtue to know how to do without what one can legitimately acquire.
100-120 AD
We are free when our acts emanate from our whole personality, when they express it, when they have that indefinable resemblance to it which one sometimes finds between the artist and his work.
1889
Can one not admire that it was only necessary to make man sensitive to pleasure and pain to give birth in him to ideas, desires, habits, and talents of all kinds?
1754
A ready-made idea is an absolutely non-transmissible thing; to be truly conscious of it, [...] one must necessarily [...] have experienced it.
1801
Marble statue head of a youth
1st or 2nd century CE
The centuries devoid of science and industry were golden ages for the church of Jesus Christ.
1766
With regard to great faults, one does not suppress the knowledge of them; one only suspends it for a time.
1636
I deny that we have the free power to suspend our judgment. [...] The suspension of judgment is therefore really an act of perception, and not of free will.
1661-1675
[The meadows], in a variegated mood, embellish with a thousand flowers of color their dappled adornment.
1546/1563
Limestone statuette of a boy holding a bird
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
The word makes man free; as long as he cannot speak, he is a slave: an outrageous passion, an excessive joy, an extreme sorrow, are equally mute.
1841
The distinction of subject and object [...] is the common form of all [representations], the only one under which any representation can be conceived.
1819
Parties are organizations publicly, officially constituted in such a way as to kill in souls the sense of truth and justice.
1940
Virtue or personal merit consists in the possession of qualities of the soul which are useful or agreeable, either to the person who possesses them, or to others.
1751
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
These childish and savage peoples imagined the earth to be flat [...] the sun, the moon, and the stars, continually walking on a solid arch that was called a firmament.
1764
The man who has reached this point cares as little for praise as for blame. He knows how to rise like a dragon, and to flatten himself like a serpent, bending to circumstances, not clinging to any preconceived notion.
4th century BC
[...] furious at perishing from a mere sting, they roll on the ground in rage and shame.
1580
You suspected that my explanation would be contrary to the very different idea we have of mind and body; but [...] no one has better established their independence.
1696
Curettes ?
670 BCE - 330 CE
What is it then that troubles me [...]? Is it the sea? No; it is my judgment.
c. 108 AD
There are a thousand pleasant things that happen every moment; one enjoys them [...], but has the ingratitude to forget them.
1760
What is animate differs in existence from what is inanimate, and there are many things that pertain to life, such as intelligence, sensation, and movement.
1270
Under bad princes, [...] it is the present evil that makes one tremble; all hope is in the future; men hope that from his excesses, liberty may be born.
1855
Portrait of a Woman
1775