When you're tired of listening to living idiots.
Little by little, the people grow accustomed to irreverence towards the magistrate, [...] learn to disobey willingly, and let themselves be led by the bait of liberty, or rather license, which is the sweetest and most tantalizing poison in the world.
c. 1552-1553
Until now, Logic has been nothing more than the art of drawing legitimate consequences from a proposition supposed to be true and admitted as such.
1817
True patriotism is made of concentric layers, whose center [...] is the love of family; without the latter, only a sordid association of interests remains.
1896
Augustus confiscated the property of a Roman Knight who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of his two young children to excuse them from going to the armies.
1580
1647
The proper study of man is that of his relationships.
1762
To think often, and not to retain for a single moment the memory of what one thinks, is to think in a very useless manner.
1689
To understand this secret language [...], the same grace that alone can give the first understanding must continue it and make it ever-present.
1656-1657
Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life.
1851/1852
1747
Let us call one of these two paths or methods 'anticipations of the mind,' and the other, 'interpretation of nature'.
1620
I am on a continuous journey.
1643-1649
As they spare no one, so no one spares them; and were they at the height of elevation, the last of men will believe himself entitled to strike at them.
1636
I am convinced that impudence and obstinacy are the companions of error: men who go astray give free rein to passion, without ever remaining in that state of reasonable suspension, which alone can protect them from the grossest absurdities.
1751
1800
Do you want to know when our life will be barbaric, savage, unsociable? It will be when the laws are suppressed, [...] but when at the same time doctrines that invite us to pleasure are maintained.
1st Century A.D.
Pity is the imagination or fiction of a future misfortune for ourselves, produced by the feeling of another's misfortune.
1772
How the excessive love of well-being can be detrimental to well-being.
1835-1840
Every true republic is and can be nothing else than a representative system of the people, established to protect their rights in their name [...].
1797
1607
Pride, indeed, wants only to do its own will; humility, on the contrary, does the will of God.
1263-1264
Can religion and faith not be defended, unless men take care to ignore everything and to abdicate reason?
1670
They were content [...] to weigh the comparative merits of deduction and induction and to conduct a summary inquiry into the most general resources available for sociological investigation.
1895
In this imminent peril of the will, art approaches as a saving god, bringing the helping balm.
1872
1494(?)
[...] from the duchess to the commoner, there was not a woman who did not have her own, either for show or for a reason.
1748
Our entire inner life is something like a single sentence begun at the first awakening of consciousness, a sentence strewn with commas, but nowhere cut by full stops.
1919
Weak republics are irresolute and do not know how to make a decision; or if they do adopt one, it must be attributed to necessity rather than to their choice.
1513-1519
What nature does, only nature can undo.
1772
3900 BCE - 100 CE
One must clearly distinguish the strength and beauty of words from the strength and evidence of reasons.
1674-1675
I have found that all those who associated with me had the same opinion of me.
4th century BC
[Philosophy is] the disinterested idea of science. To observe in order to know, with no other goal than to understand the world in which we live, its phenomena, its origin, and its end.
c. 350 B.C.E.
I couldn't teach it to my son, and at seventy years old, to have a good wheel, I still have to make it myself.
4th century BC
1591
The feeling of freedom as it may exist in a man who rests his affections on beings of whom he is the absolute master, is not the true love of freedom.
1869
None of you, without the command of him who gave it [the soul] to you, can leave this mortal life; by fleeing it, you would seem to abandon the post where God has placed you.
54-51 BC
Sensation has for its general condition that the universal animal be sympathetic to itself; without this, how could one thing partake in the power of another thing from which it is very distant?
c. 253-270 AD
A benefit is a social act that earns us an obliged person, a friend; giving to oneself has nothing social about it [...].
1st century AD
ca 500–450 BCE
Absence always increases unsatisfied love, and philosophy does not diminish it.
1767
Our souls connect and attach to God, as parts that have been detached from him, without God noticing their movement [...]!
c. 108 AD
[...] a wife's infidelity almost always stems from the husband's inadequacy. Hence also the ridicule of deceived spouses, [...] of those who did not know how to make themselves loved.
1926
He who believes without having any reason to believe may be in love with his own fancies, but it is not true that he seeks the truth.
1704
4th century BCE
Thus, as some lack what is abundant in others, they all contribute to their common advantage.
1776
What is beautiful and great but that which nature has made? What is deformed and weak but that which it has produced in its harshness?
1746
The desire to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the desire for the Incarnation. It is by mistake that it believes itself to be something else.
1942
Novels [...] have created [...] a whole false view of existence and awakened expectations that cannot be fulfilled. This very frequently exerts the most unfortunate influence on their entire life.
1909
ca. 1600