The prophets did not always speak by revelation, and this even happened very rarely [...].
1670
A life woven from pleasures [...] is infinitely more subject to disgust than a laborious life.
1742
He preferred the care of his life to the care of the empire. How much more would he have preferred the care of his life to lesser cares?
4th century BC
Evil has a head start in us; we walk towards virtue, entangled in a thousand vices; I am ashamed to say it: we cultivate honesty in our spare moments.
63-64 AD
Terracotta head of a youth
2nd century BCE (?)
I would not wish to put wisdom at such a high price.
1580
[...] by a habitual blindness, men do not see what exists; they see what their inclination represents to them.
1764
As soon as we approach a new domain, the previous principles are of no more help to us; fundamental laws of another kind appear [...].
1819
April, the perfume of the gods, who, from the heavens, smell the scent of the plain.
1546/1563
Terracotta head of a youth
early 3rd century BCE (?)
Organized bodies [...] remain the same only in appearance, and not, strictly speaking. It is much like a river that is always changing its water, or like the ship of Theseus that the Athenians were always repairing.
1704
great princes are above the law.
circa 1748
Memory [...] precisely represents the point of intersection between spirit and matter.
1896
What does a superior mind matter, if the heart does not match it?
1636
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Bénévent
1808
All sensitive organisms know those states where one suffers and delights in one's suffering; but one only delights in it because one foresees its end.
1926
[...] the poor and the rich equally unhappy with their station, and consequently equally unjust and blind, for they envy one another, and believe each other to be happy.
1746
It is not enough for you to bear my death with patience; if you do not die yourselves, you have no fruit to hope for from my death.
1263-1264
The ultimate sanction of all morality (external motives apart) is a subjective feeling in our own minds.
1861
Terracotta plank-shaped figurine
ca. 2000–1800 BCE
The German spirit is an indigestion; it can never be done with anything.
1888
He leaves the second volume [...] advanced enough to be published.
March 17, 1883
The sanctity of this learned man dazzled me as much as the beauty of his divine style. [...] he touched my heart, and I find myself more virtuous for it.
45 BC
The word is also an image, an eminently abstract image; indeed, by pronouncing the name of a thing, one imagines one knows the thing itself.
1841
Madonna and Child
ca. 1480
If they remain savages, they are pushed before you [...]; if they want to become civilized, contact with men more civilized than themselves delivers them to oppression and misery. [...] they perish.
1835-1840
It is [...] difficult to think that I cannot succeed, if my affair is conducted with some skill.
1513-1527
It is true that the debts were extinguished: but the taxes remained; and they were accumulated [...].
1776
It was the combined passions of the love of liberty and the hatred of slavery which, more than the skill of engineers, made for the famous and stubborn defenses.
1758
A Man Leaning on a Parapet
ca. 1881
Whoever holds in his hand what you desire or what you fear, is your master.
c. 108 AD
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
c. 375 BC
It takes but a word, a gesture from them [princes] [...] to make science [...] pass for low pedantry; recklessness [...] for greatness of courage; and impiety [...] for strength and freedom of mind.
1674-1675
[Error] is any way of thinking in matters of Religion that differs from that of the Priests [...]. There is no more unpardonable crime among Christians than to be mistaken.
1768
Ornament, flower-shaped mount for stone base
7000 BCE - 330 CE
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
I would rather die than accuse my mother.
1764
Repentance [...] serves to make us correct ourselves, not only for faults committed voluntarily, but also for those made through ignorance.
1643-1649
Imagining that, to penetrate the secrets of nature, it was enough to meditate with obstinacy, to turn one's mind, so to speak, in every direction, and to keep it in perpetual agitation.
1620
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
It was neither their discord nor their enmity, but their friendship and union, that was for [the republic] the first and most fatal misfortune.
100-120 AD
Wisdom consists in knowing as much as one can about these divine, eternal, primitive, immutable phenomena; and philosophy is but the assiduous pursuit of this noble study.
c. 350 B.C.E.
Every movement performed is always exactly represented by the quantity of extension traversed, for it is the same fact considered in two ways.
1817
Probability is the likeliness of a thing to be true. [...] The way the Mind receives such propositions is what we call belief, assent, or opinion.
1689
The Pérussis Altarpiece
1480
One should not write for such readers when one wants to live beyond one's own century.
1750
The great sociologists [...] have hardly moved beyond generalities about the nature of societies, the relationship between the social and biological realms, and the general course of progress.
1895
Let us revisit our masters up close; let us restore their true words [...]. An excellent regimen that I propose, even to original authors, to reinvigorate themselves for a season.
1670
Only effort without desire [...] unfailingly contains a reward.
1947
Saint Teresa of Avila Interceding for Souls in Purgatory
1597