Courage has more resources against misfortunes than reason.
1747
Consider how much good examples serve humanity, and recognize that the memory of great men is no less beneficial than their presence.
63-64 AD
The sea is judged to be calm when its surface is not stirred by the slightest wind; and likewise the soul is judged to be tranquil when no disturbance agitates it.
45 BC
The word Passover means passage [...] when we pass from the devil to Jesus Christ, and from this inconstant world into the kingdom whose foundations are unshakable.
1263-1264
Terracotta plank-shaped figurine
ca. 2000–1800 BCE
The diseases of the mind are not cured otherwise [than with time].
c. 1552-1553
It is a general law of all our movements, that the more they are repeated, the easier and faster they become; and the easier and faster they are, the less perceptible they are.
1801
When the harmful does not outweigh the flaw, it makes one laugh; but if [the thing] is severe or dangerous, it will make no one laugh.
1740s
There is in [man] a principle of resurrection, the immortality of the idea.
1870
The Villa Loredan, Paese
early 1780s
The advocate of [the doctrine of happiness] cannot hope to be happy if he is not conscious of having done his duty; and he can only be moved to do his duty by the hope of happiness.
1797-1798
Because the laws [...] have a constant and lasting virtue, [...] it is necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to the execution of them.
1690
To please in society, one must not delve deeply into any matter, but flit from subject to subject [...] and consequently give one's mind more surface than depth.
1758
By diverse means, one arrives at a similar end.
1580
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Angels
1460
Could there be a way of teaching without words, an intangible process for shaping hearts?
4th century BC
What was at first a mere brute fact becomes a legal right, guaranteed by society, supported and protected by social forces [...].
1869
The moth, when the universal sun has set, seeks the glimmer of the private lamp.
1841
[The soul of the star] cannot therefore be harmful since its principle is an excellent nature.
c. 253-270 AD
The Tears of Saint Peter
ca. 1612–13
A government can no more suffice on its own to maintain and renew the circulation of sentiments and ideas in a great people than to conduct all its industrial undertakings.
1835-1840
Perfect faith is God felt by the heart!
1670
Coitus conceals itself by crawling, like a criminal.
1851
[...] that glory which the people, in their stupidity, attach to conquests, and which historians, even more stupid, love to celebrate [...].
1776
Madonna and Child
1425
[The illusion that] thought, following the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abysses of Being, and that it has the power not only to know but even to correct existence.
1872
A philosopher becomes attached to a favorite principle [...] at once he wants to subject the entire universe to it, & reduce all phenomena to it; which throws him into forced reasonings, & into countless absurdities.
1742
Faith is a virtue invented by men who feared the enlightenment of reason, who wanted to deceive their fellow men in order to subject them to their own authority [...].
1766
[Magic] is found everywhere for those who want to see it there.
1623
Portrait of a Man in Royal Livery
1532–35
I cannot be at the same time your magistrate and your slave.
100-120 AD
Instead of that speculative philosophy [...], one can find a practical one, by which [...] we might [...] make ourselves, as it were, the masters and possessors of nature.
1637
By living without committing the slightest injustice, which is, in my eyes, the most beautiful way to prepare a defense.
4th century BC
He delighted in the honors and pomps of the world, and valued the praise of men, which threw him into great prodigality.
1518-1527
Top of a marble funerary relief with portrait busts of a young man and an elderly woman
ca. 138–141 CE
Life is an indifferent thing, but the way we live it is not.
c. 108 AD
The author [...] warns in several places that in the times of which he tells the history, there was no king in Israel; which proves that this book was written at the time when the Hebrews had kings.
1670
Will morals be less pure because reason is more enlightened? [...] will our path become less easy to find and more difficult to keep?
1750
When one has found the truth, one must stand firm in it; since curiosity is given to us only to lead us to discover it.
1674-1675
The Birth of the Virgin
ca. 1690
For how many great captains have iron and fire sometimes succeeded less than a cleverly placed witticism?
1636
How could I prove what I have advanced concerning the harmony of two substances as different as the soul and the body.
1696
They live more by memory than by hope; [...] Hence their loquacity.
329-323 BC
Contradiction experienced to the very depths of one's being is a tearing apart, it is the cross.
1947
Chisel
670 BCE - 330 CE
Perception embraces [several systems] all at once. But the physicist cannot adopt them all together as a reference system: he necessarily chooses one of them.
1922
Just because a society does not find pillaging neighboring nations revolting, one cannot conclude that it tolerates the same practices in its internal relations [...].
1893
One will feel the indispensable necessity of having an open mind to understand prophecies.
1764
The foundation of theology is the miracle, the will, the refuge of ignorance [...]; the foundation of philosophy is the nature of things, reason, the mother of law and necessity.
1842-1845
Head and neck of a marble figure
2700–2300 BCE