Nothing can [...] happen to one of its parts without the other parts feeling it more or less, and the world thus forms a whole sympathetic to itself.
c. 253-270 AD
We see that, in games [...] the first rules, the first laws are purely positive, purely conventional, rules that must be adopted purely and simply, and without dispute.
1623
Life is short, less because of the short time it lasts, than because we have almost no time of this short duration to enjoy it.
1762
Twice already I have tried to prepare a defense, and my daimon has opposed it.
4th century BC
Portrait of a Man
1537
So little is Fortune against nature! It cannot satisfy its desires; for that great authority, that vast expanse of country, could not satisfy the ambition of two men.
100-120 AD
If I doubt all other things, that very doubt convinces me of my own existence, and does not permit me to doubt it.
1689
Besides numerical multiplicity there is another, which includes neither precise distinction nor juxtaposition.
1890
To know divinity only as power and not as good is idolatry [...]. It is only because the Good is unique that one must recognize a single God.
1962
Die-counter or draught piece
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Error [...] consists only in a hasty consent of the will, which allows itself to be dazzled by some false glimmer.
1674-1675
The foundation of all States is a good military, and where it does not exist, there can be neither good laws nor any other good thing.
1855
Just because something seems true to someone is not a reason for it to be so.
c. 108 AD
For every solution, [the ancients] addressed the root, the origin, the Principle that contains them all; and it is this high-level view that made their government superior.
4th century BC
The Crucifixion
1389
Reason deceives us more often than nature.
1747
Whenever reason is against a man, a man will be against reason.
1772
The fact that criminal justice condemns suicide [...] is absolutely ridiculous, since no punishment can frighten someone who is seeking death.
1851
There is no other difference between [the mind and the heart] than that of a greater or lesser degree of energy and liveliness; but it is always feeling.
1805
Bronze handle attachment with duck heads
1st century BCE
The subtle entry of these small bodies of air and fire which are everywhere, appearing less to the senses than to reason, leads one to conjecture a void that is a privation of all body.
1653-1662
A good [leader] never has weapons that are too short; what they lack in length, their bravery knows how to supplement.
1636
If patricians were to elect their colleagues [...], without passion and solely for the public interest, no government could be compared to an aristocratic one.
1677
The world suffers an extremely serious loss by refusing to make use of one half of the total amount of talent it possesses.
1869
The Man of Sorrows
ca. 1430
Let all the noises of the world rise up outside, provided that within me no tumult occurs, that desire and fear do not fight there.
63-64 AD
One must be wary of authors who report that in some countries the laws permit women to have several husbands. [...] What is not in conformity with the ordinary course of nature is rarely true.
1764
The act of thinking is instantaneous; science, on the contrary, is a disposition [...] that can be applied successively to several things.
End of the 4th century BC
We are no longer romantics, but romanticism influenced us greatly. We must know the origin of our ideas.
1926
Pansies
1903
One of his flatterers, named Damocles [...] believed himself the most fortunate of men, when all of a sudden he perceived above his head a naked sword [...] attached to the ceiling by a single horsehair.
45 BC
[...] the present is big with the future.
1702
Without an interest in loving virtue, there is no virtue.
1772
The contradiction of faith and love.
1841
The Departure of the Gondola
mid-1760s
The closure of a small workshop causes only very limited disturbances [...]; the bankruptcy of a large industrial company is, on the contrary, a public disruption.
1893
I do nothing without gaiety: and too firm a continuation and contention dazzles my judgment, saddens it, and wearies it.
1580
April, the grace, and the smile [...], the scent and the sweet breath.
1546/1563
He acted like a misunderstood genius whom all the world takes for a simpleton.
1851/1852
Saint John on Patmos
ca. 1511
We are not deceived about what we judge to be pleasant, as we can be deceived about what we judge to be true.
1768
In France, provincials have for Paris and the central power [...] feelings analogous to those the English have for their aristocracy, which they sometimes bear with impatience and often view with jealousy, but which, at heart, they love [...].
1893
I am on a continuous journey.
1643-1649
A thing can be predicated of another in two ways: [...] by something intrinsic to it [...] or by that which is not formally in the thing denominated, but is something absolute and extrinsic.
c. 1270
Terracotta head from a statue
ca. 525–500 BCE
I esteem a man whose self-love [...] is so directed as to give him a concern for others and to make himself useful to society.
1751
National jealousies [...] lead to horrors.
1770
The more I reflect on God, the less I can penetrate Him. Such is not the language of the learned crowd. They know nothing, they understand nothing, yet they speak of everything, and boast of it.
1763
The 'inner world' is full of mirages and deceptive lights: the will is one of these mirages.
1888
Bronze kyathos (single-handled jug)
ca. 450–400 BCE