[...] the ring of Saturn could be a swarm of small satellites, which would produce for Saturn the appearance that the Milky Way has for the Earth.
1755
Education is the action exercised by the adult generations on those that are not yet ripe for social life.
1922
[The goal is to] guide and light up at night those who wish to use the service to come and go wherever they please.
1662
What we honor with the name of peace is properly but a short truce, by which the weaker party renounces its claims [...].
1746
Portrait of a Venetian Senator
ca. 1525
What I have written about it is so true & so clear, that I am sure there will be no reasonable man who does not admit it.
1643-1649
The food that would satisfy a dwarf [...] would only whet the appetite of a giant.
1636
passions act upon the imagination, and the corrupted imagination strives against reason [...].
1674-1675
An ounce of a man’s own wit is worth a ton of other people’s.
1905
Limestone funerary cippus
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
This truth was only momentary, and one had to be quick to say it.
1776
There enters into our composition something of the character of the turtledove, though allied with that of the wolf and the serpent.
1751
[Our doctrine] also teaches each person to be content with what they have and to come to the aid of others, not out of vain pity [...], but by the order of reason alone.
1661-1675
All his glory comes from within [...], from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
1263-1264
Two marble portrait heads from a relief
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
[The substances agree] just as if there were a mutual influence, or as if God always had a hand in it beyond His general concurrence.
1696
The multiple is composed only of the combination of units; and as soon as one suppresses the unit, one suppresses plurality at the same time.
c. 350 B.C.E.
With time, all became quiet: people grew accustomed to [the new law] as if it had always existed.
1756
In bad verse; who tells you otherwise?
1819
The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John
ca. 1624–25
He who lives according to God must [...] not hate the man for the vice, nor [...] love the vice for the man, but [...] hate the vice and love the man.
c. 253-270 AD
When ambition [...] sought to retain and increase power, without caring to consider for what end it had been committed, it was thought necessary to examine [...] the origin and rights of government.
1690
One can draw [...] from our man's stupidity an advantage: it is that one must not lose all hope.
1518
Our well-being is nothing but the privation of being unwell.
1580
Portrait of a Woman
1778
The discovery of the truth, always useful to the public, was never fatal except to its author.
1772
Within these nations there reigns a slight, awkward motion, a sort of incessant jostling of men against one another, which troubles and distracts the mind without enlivening or elevating it.
1835-1840
The skill to do things comes from doing them; knowledge comes from ever-open eyes and laborious hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.
1870
The labyrinth is a very ingenious emblem of the nature of mechanics in general.
1620
Heroic Landscape with Rainbow
1824
We hold from our nature a hatred for servitude and a love for liberty.
c. 387 BC
You follow the most ancient of all laws, that which gives to the strongest the goods of the weakest.
100-120 AD
Nothing can cure my love, and everything increases my sadness.
1752
You, on the contrary, if you have really only ever been concerned with making the proper use of your ideas, say to yourself from the morning on [...]: 'What do I lack to rise above all passions, above all troubles?'
c. 108 AD
Portrait of a Man
1670
Great men, like great epochs, are explosive materials in which a tremendous force is accumulated.
1888
They produce, but do not hoard; they give, without demanding anything in return. Among them, there is neither etiquette nor ceremony.
4th century BC
One must, if possible, resort to the law [...], but if violence annihilates the courts, all that remains is to repress audacity with courage [...] and force with force.
September 57 BC
[These are] the ceremonies that imprint upon some men a sacred character, which distinguishes them from profane mortals.
1766
Bronze statuette of a bull
early 5th century BCE
I experience a tearing that worsens ceaselessly, both in my intelligence and in the center of my heart, from my inability to think together in truth the misfortune of men, the perfection of God, and the link between the two.
1957
Between different consciousnesses, exchanges comparable to the phenomena of endosmosis could be taking place at every moment.
1919
Fortune only takes away what it has given: it does not give virtue, so it does not take it away.
c. 55
There can be no doubt that we are naturally free, since we are all companions, and it cannot enter anyone's mind that nature has placed anyone in servitude [...].
c. 1552-1553
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1470
Germany on the eve of the Revolution.
1848
All our ideas are formed easily within us, by the sole operations of feeling and judging.
1817
The mystery of the resurrection [...].
1841
The 'power of the people over themselves' does not express the true state of the case; [...] self-government [...] is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest.
1859
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE