But, whether through nonchalance or extreme poverty, this useful regulation was only very imperfectly executed.
1662
People are naturally inconsistent [...] things must therefore be arranged so that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.
1513
It is from the bringing together of all these impressions and the combinations we make of them [...] that the perception or individual idea of an object is formed for us.
1805
Will you then never feel who you are, for what end you were born, and why you have received the gift of sight?
c. 108 AD
Head of a marble Aphrodite statuette
3rd century BCE
When I make a wheel, [...] if I go at it, I know not how, the result will be in line with my ideal [...]. It's a knack that cannot be expressed.
4th century BC
Why be surprised [...] if the divinity judges it more advantageous for me to leave life at this very moment?
4th century BC
I have always thought that we must concern ourselves with peace, and I have seen with sorrow that it was rejected [...].
46 BC
Senseless plan, blind cruelty! Could not the Lord, who was able to resurrect a dead man, resurrect him if he were killed?
1263-1264
Bronze handles of a hydria (water jar)
early 5th century BCE
Is it outside of me or in me? asks [...] every man from whom a vision of this sort does not take away his composure.
1836
They willingly deny what they cannot understand: this gives them little faith for the extraordinary, and an almost invincible distaste for the supernatural.
1835-1840
But, as I do not know them, I cannot explain them, for I have no clear idea of my own mind[...]
1674-1675
All religions claim to emanate from heaven; all forbid the use of reason [...]; all claim to be true, to the exclusion of others.
1766
Limestone statuette of Geryon
probably early 5th century BCE
One can act with one's instincts like a gardener and [...] cultivate the seeds of anger, pity, subtlety, vanity, to make them productive [...]. All this is open to us: but how many know that it is open to us?
1881
The publisher is the man with the money, and that is quite enough.
1741-1784
A [...] feeling of the inevitable necessity of dying incites men to aspire [...] to another kind of eternity, by immortalizing their name through actions [...] that leave a long memory.
1620
Vanity [...] consists in such an immoderate display of one's own advantages [...] that it can only offend others by shocking, without measure, their ambition and their secret vanity.
1751
Copper alloy dagger blade
ca. 2200–1800 BCE
Finding myself entirely destitute and empty of any other matter, I presented myself to myself as an argument and a subject.
1580
The Revolution [...] presented itself as the revolution of the working classes against the middle classes; it proclaimed the fall of the latter's government and the emancipation of the worker.
1851-1852
I think, therefore I am.
1637
[In myths] [...] that which is by nature eternal is said to be begotten and born.
c. 253-270 AD
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
It seems that if [a philosopher] listened too much to his reason against the mysteries of one religion, he should have listened even more to that same reason [...] against the fables of another.
1764
I am bound not to rob, not to murder [...]; but why am I bound to promote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?
1861
The directing organ of social life can have absorbed all of the latter [...] without being very developed for that reason, if social life itself is not very developed.
1893
Whether men join this or that idea or not [...] makes no difference to essences, genera, or species, since it is only a matter of possibilities, which are independent of our thought.
1704
Diana
ca. 1760
Fear is a pain or disturbance caused by the idea of a future evil, whether destructive or distressing.
329-323 BC
A man, however great he may be, [...] only holds his place in an immense cycle; he does not fill the entire cycle.
1926
Corinth had always shown a deep love for liberty, and an equally strong hatred for tyranny: it had undertaken almost all its wars [...] not to dominate peoples, [...] but in the interest of the freedom of the Greeks.
100-120 AD
There is no good but the true, but that which invites, which entices, is only plausible: it steals, it solicits, it carries away.
63-64 AD
Still Life with Flowers and Fruit
1866
[Artistic thought is] an organic growth [...] in which what is new does not destroy what is old, but only expands it.
1896
[One must] discover an opportunity through which one could advance, with a small contribution, the greatest possible, most lasting, and general good.
1777
I believe [...] that God is, as they say, the immanent cause of all things and not the transitive cause.
1661-1676
Despair [...] is the greatest of our errors.
1746
Portrait of a Woman
1778
I conceive of two kinds of inequality in the human species: one, natural or physical, [...] the other, moral or political, because it depends on a kind of convention and is established [...] by the consent of men.
1755
April, the honor of the green, yellow, and blue-green meadows [...].
1546/1563
Prosperity [...] is but a fleeting state: it is a kind of game [...] where the most skillful is the one who knows when to quit while they're ahead.
1636
By this means [man] no more increases his knowledge than he increases his riches who, taking a bag of counters [...] names one a Crown, another a Pound [...] without however being richer by a mite.
1689
Bronze shield boss
8th–7th century BCE
What makes us demand [...] singular characters and new situations? The desire to be moved.
1772
Taste is such a happy way of feeling that one perceives the value of things without the help of reflection [...].
1746
Agreement between several people contains a feeling of reality. [...] Deviation from this agreement appears as a sin.
1947
The two hypotheses are equivalent for the mathematician. But the same is not true for the philosopher.
1922
Buckle
3900 BCE - 100 CE