What beauty and magnificence are for the artist, the prosaic and ordinary being cannot conceive.
1896
Crime is therefore necessary; it is bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life, and by that very fact it is useful.
1895
Man alone is something imperfect; he must find a second to be happy.
1643-1662
A communication of thought occurs that neither silence nor pretense can prevent.
1836
Rustic Interior
1632
Passion is better than stoicism and hypocrisy; that being honest, even in evil, is better than losing oneself out of respect for conventional morality.
1876
The will is but a desire that is not fought, that has its object in its power, or at least believes it has [...].
1746
The first [precept] was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such.
1637
In youth, we live in a tumult of passions [...]. Later, the mind and heart open up and provide higher motives for activity.
1870
Portrait of a Man
1795
In the middle of a piece of amber [...] one sometimes sees insects that have been perfectly preserved there [...] as in a mausoleum.
1623
Is it not a Government where one man, commanding a multitude, is judge in his own cause, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases?
1690
Chrysippus taught that mixtion is broader than temperation.
c. 253-270 AD
The forms that give utility to raw materials give them value.
1776
Limestone head of a girl
3rd century BCE
Self-knowledge [...] is the beginning of all human wisdom.
1797-1798
Poetry consists in imitation.
c. 335 BC
Fortune [...] claims the greatest part [of success]; and there is hardly any success that she does not claim as her own work.
46 BC
A simpler demonstration could be formed, without speaking of perfections, so as not to be stopped by those who deny that all perfections are compatible.
Late 17th - early 18th century
Peasants Dancing and Feasting
ca. 1660
God loves his work in us, but God would not have done in us what is worthy of his love if, before doing so, he had not loved us first.
1263-1264
Through his abdication, Charles V in turn rose above fortune.
1636
Most men seem incapable of concluding anything from the first principle of morality.
1674-1675
[The interpreters of prophecies] would be able to find in any writing whatever they wanted it to say.
1580
Madonna and Child
ca. 1480
The influence [...] of the morals of distinguished citizens on the multitude that [...] imitates them almost without noticing.
1741-1784
If I perceive this loss of my faculties, and I become displeasing to myself, how could I still find pleasure in living?
4th century BC
[The capitalist] sells not only what has cost him an equivalent, but also what has cost him nothing at all, although it has cost his worker's labor.
1865
All that can be said of domestic despotism applies to political despotism.
1869
Bronze knife with ram's-head handle
ca. 1st century CE
It is an extreme misfortune to be subject to a master of whom one can never be sure that he will be good, since it is always in his power to be evil when he pleases.
c. 1552-1553
Once the ether has vanished along with the privileged system and fixed points, there are only relative movements of objects with respect to one another.
1922
Necessity is an enemy for man as long as he thinks in the first person.
1951
Adversity is an opportunity for virtue.
c. 64 AD
Limestone statue of a lion
ca. 700–650 BCE
Study yourself sometimes to behave as if you were sick, to know one day how to behave like a healthy man.
c. 108 AD
In Portugal, in Spain, in Roussillon, solemn dances are still performed today in honor of the mysteries of Christianity.
1764
What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life making pinheads?
1835-1840
[...] even attachment to parents is against pure nature, since it causes pleasure or sorrow.
4th century BC
Standing boy with a goose
3rd century BCE
[Our general ideas] have no other support in our mind than the word that represents them.
1817
Humanity [...] manages vanity, shows it the truth, but in the least offensive expressions.
1772
I knew that base passions seldom subjugate any but weak men, and have little hold on souls of a strong temper [...].
1782-1789
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
Lower right corner of a marble sarcophagus, illustrating the discovery of Achilles by Odysseus on the island of Skyros
ca. 160–180 CE
This power, divided between two rivals, maintained the balance [...]; but as soon as it was united and weighed entirely on a single point, it had no counterweight, and ended up shaking the republic and overthrowing it completely.
100-120 AD
[We charge our expert] with accompanying and leading them by the most convenient path.
1498
This so-called virtue [humility] is only fit to degrade man, to debase him in his own eyes, to stifle in him all energy and all desire to be useful to society.
1766
It is as impossible to dissolve such a bond, founded on a common love of truth, as it is not to embrace truth itself as soon as one perceives it.
1661-1676
Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827–1910)
ca. 1852–57