One must not judge customs by laws. Laws often only testify to fleeting intentions; they often only reflect the opinion of a group that has momentarily succeeded in dominating the general will.
1926
We must not judge what is possible and what is not, according to what seems believable or unbelievable to us.
1580
An injury done to a member of a political body engages the whole body to demand reparation.
1690
Wretched man, is not what you see every day enough for you? Can you see anything more beautiful [...] than the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth, and the sea?
c. 108 AD
Terracotta statuette of an actor
late 5th–early 4th century BCE
All this amounts to saying that all bodies whose parts are only mechanically united are not substances, but only machines or aggregates of several substances.
1686
'But the road they call us to is arduous, bristling with obstacles!' Is it then by the plain that one reaches the heights?
c. 55
Where is the man who is not perfectly content with his way of life, and who would not believe himself unhappy to change it for that of his neighbor?
1742
The distinction between those who lived in the past and those who are still living is not absolute; [...] in all equally, it is the same will to live that manifests itself.
1836
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
No power can reproach [a people] for having acquired its freedom through revolt; none can say to them: I have freed you [...].
1764
To neutralize a faith, there is no more admirable method than to begin by exterminating most of those who transmit it, and then to make it the official doctrine of an idolatrous state.
1953
[...] that a thing is incomprehensible is no reason to refuse our assent to it when its existence is proven. We are only justified in denying what is demonstrably impossible [...].
1801
True tolerance and freedom of thought are the true antidotes to religious fanaticism.
1766
View of the Campidoglio with the Statue of Marcus Aurelius
1762
The very history of our own days, however new and unforeseen it may seem, always belongs in its essence to the old history of humanity, and what we call new facts are most often only forgotten ones.
1893
Often the wisest advice [...] comes to nothing for lack of courage when it comes to execution.
1636
I am this way, without knowing why. I am, like the husk from which a cicada has emerged, [...] an accessory, a thing having no existence of its own.
4th century BC
There is nothing false, nothing unworthy of being said and recommended in writing for times to come.
1574
The Three Graces
1807
One cannot preserve old grace except by acquiring new grace; otherwise, one will lose what one thinks one holds, like those who, wishing to enclose the light, enclose only darkness.
1656-1657
Where restitutive law is highly developed, there is a professional morality for each profession.
1893
Allow me to join with you in a sincere friendship, and let us cultivate it carefully through common studies and all manner of good offices.
1661-1676
If the best way to avoid the plague is to have joy, the mere presence of my lover is enough to make it bloom in my heart.
1527
The Meeting of Alexander the Great and Diogenes
1605
The dynamic relation of cause to effect, the necessary determination of the effect by the cause, are felt and lived [...] by us even before being thought.
1900
There is a temptation that leads directly to sin, and it can never be the work of God [...]. There is also a temptation whose purpose is to test faith.
1263-1264
Thus, by instinct alone, these men asked for and lent each other aid. I say by instinct alone; for reflection could not yet have had any part in it.
1746
Reason thus finds itself degraded to the point of doing what is not its domain, and not doing what is; it no longer has a criterion in itself, it no longer distinguishes between true and false [...].
1841
Head and neck from a marble figure
2700–2500 BCE
It is better to derogate from one's station than from one's genius.
1746
[...] the stagnation [...] of the desire [for money] would be fatal to certain states.
1772
[One must discover] the true motives hidden under pretexts, the secrets of state.
1623
O [my rival], I envy your death, since you envied me the glory of giving you life!
100-120 AD
Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx
ca. 530 BCE
Most men are far too busy with themselves to be wicked.
1878
Why do not all beings have a soul [...]?
384–322 BC
One must know what ought to be in order to judge well what is.
1762
Let the voice of your jewels awaken that of your consciences; and do not blush to confess crimes that you were not ashamed to commit.
1748
Bronze handle attachment with duck heads
1st century BCE
I have no clear idea of my mind, in which I could discover all the modifications of which it is capable.
1674-1675
It is a disgrace to believe oneself sufficiently enlightened by conjecture and suspicion in the absence of witnesses.
86-82 BC
If [metaphysics] is a science, how is it that it cannot, like others, obtain universal and lasting assent? If it is not one, how is it that it always affects the appearance of one, and nourishes the mind with an incessant and never satisfied hope?
1783
It seemed to me that I had gained no other profit from my attempts to learn, except to discover more and more my own ignorance.
1637
Part of the left foot of a colossal marble statue
3rd–2nd century BCE
Bentham's dictum, 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one,' might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory commentary.
1861
Constitutionalists openly conspire against the constitution; revolutionaries confess that they are constitutional.
1851/1852
If a man is willing to remain at his post and to defend himself against the enemy without running away, you may be sure that he is a man of courage.
c. 380 BC
That which passes through the air does not always affect it and often merely divides it.
c. 253-270 AD
The Return of Persephone
ca. 1890–91