One must clearly distinguish the strength and beauty of words from the strength and evidence of reasons.
1674-1675
One admires in Montaigne the piquancy, the unexpectedness of expression, the astonishing originality of thought, and that inexhaustible fertility, which has him repeat the same thing twenty times with ever new verve.
1580
Now, put the soul and the body in the place of these two clocks; their agreement can happen in one of these three ways.
1696
Mixtion is the diffusion of two or more bodies throughout their whole, with their qualities remaining, like fire in incandescent iron.
c. 253-270 AD
Man in a Turban
1632
Hurt by the too manifest contradictions of our opinions, I sought through so many errors the abandoned paths of the true.
1746
We shape plants by cultivation, and men by education.
1762
Scientific research, as recommended by Claude Bernard, is a dialogue between man and nature.
1915
When a people is given over to all furies [...], one does not fear the present evil, but fears its future results; one trembles to see a tyrant rise from the heart of the disorders.
1855
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
1745
Reason therefore teaches us to love God, it cannot teach us to obey him; [...] [it] is incapable of making us conceive of God as a prince who establishes laws.
1670
What a sickness moralism is when it is not supported by a strong and discreet will [...]!
1926
What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial product; it is the result of forced repression in one direction, and unnatural stimulation in another.
1869
There is a word without words... Sometimes there is no need for words...
4th century BC
Portrait of a Man
1781
The people of Paris need good weather to fight, and they fear the rain more than grapeshot.
1893
Common sense, wit, reason, and their opposites are all born from the same principle, which is the connection of ideas with one another.
1746
The better one knows the nature of things, the better one's chance of using it effectively.
1922
The two main pitfalls of heroism are unbridled anger and unrestrained greed: that is where reputation commonly runs aground.
1636
The Dispatch-Bearer
?1879
The man of letters pays the same tribute without receiving anything.
1764
He blindly follows what he believes to be my opinions [...] even though he does not understand them; thus he blindly contradicts them [...].
1643-1649
When I imagine, I assemble differently ideas that I have already had; [...] but all this by virtue of my perceiving them and making judgments about them.
1817
One must engage in self-contemplation to know whether one is a wild beast, more [...] violent than a Typhon, or a being partaking of a divine nature [...].
1st Century A.D.
Buckle with lion and boar
1st–3rd century CE
Give folly all that it desires, it will believe it still does not have enough: wisdom, on the contrary, always content with what it presently possesses, never murmurs at its lot.
45 BC
The knowledge of our imperfection as thinking beings is the most immediate knowledge; it is common to all men [...].
1932-1942
...so that the quality and durability [of the products] compel everyone to use them.
1662
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
Bashi-Bazouk
ca. 1868–69
We would like to know everything, without taking the trouble to learn.
1758
Wealth should not give rise to pride, nor to idleness; it should only be an instrument in the service of virtue.
c. 387 BC
The economy of goodness is the dream of the most adventurous utopians.
1878
Man in the State [...] has entirely renounced his wild, lawless freedom in order to find his freedom in general, intact, in a lawful dependency, that is, in a juridical state.
1797
Bronze jug
late 1st–2nd century CE
Our frenzy is not only individual, it is national: we repress assassinations [...] but wars, [...] a crime crowned with glory!
63-64 AD
Supreme virtue no more destroys free will than the spiritual life annihilates personality: on the contrary, it completes it, and is its highest expression.
1839
The more I meditate on the substance and accessories of this piece, the more advanced the intelligence of the [...] composition seems to me.
1765-1769
There is a double consequence [...]: when one proceeds by the position of the antecedent, and [...] when one proceeds by the destruction of the consequent.
c. 1270
A Man Leaning on a Parapet
ca. 1881
This so-called virtue [humility] is only fit to degrade man, to debase him in his own eyes, to stifle in him all energy and all desire to be useful to society.
1766
In well-ordered commonwealths, where the public good is considered as it ought to be, the legislative power is put into the hands of various persons.
1690
There are those who everywhere mix in [...] the political reflections in which they delight, [...] interrupting the thread of the narrative at every turn.
1623
Here is a man who has received from nature rules for judging the truth, and [...] he strives to suppress and destroy them!
c. 108 AD
Buckle
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Calculation is a matter of self-interest, and moral character a matter of virtue.
329-323 BC
No dissension is so great or so dangerous as that which comes from religion: it separates citizens, neighbors, friends, relatives [...], it breaks alliances [...] and penetrates to the depths of hearts to [...] entrench irreconcilable hatreds.
c. 1552-1553
It is enough that we be granted [...] that we experience within ourselves some benevolence, however slight, and that we feel some sparks of friendship for the human race.
1751
To attack orthodoxy [...] or to attack the intrigues of the clergy meant, under these conditions, to attack the Government itself.
1851-1852
Terracotta plank-shaped figurine
ca. 2000–1800 BCE