To carry one's mind back into the past, and to make it, so to speak, ancient.
1623
[The state of Nature] is also a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.
1690
It seems to me that courage is the knowledge of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped for, both in war and in all other circumstances.
c. 380 BC
A truly celestial system whose solidity nothing on earth can ever alter!
1768
Buckle
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Then minds are the hardened earth; the water of truth falls on it, flows, but without fertilizing it.
1772
What I have written about it is so true & so clear, that I am sure there will be no reasonable man who does not admit it.
1643-1649
Every being has an act which is its image, so that as soon as the being exists, its act also exists, and as long as the being subsists, its act radiates more or less far.
c. 253-270 AD
[Their] judgment will become for me the rule and measure of the taste they possess.
1741-1784
Charles de Saint-Radegonde, called Charles Coguin, Abbot of Anchin
ca. 1511–20
In artificial education, [...] teachings and readings stuff the head with notions, before the existence of any serious contact with the visible world.
1909
Reactionary attempts to halt bourgeois development will fail just as surely as the moral enthusiasm and the inflamed proclamations of the democrats.
1850
Through freedom of trade, [the provinces] are all at the same time both agricultural and merchant. This is because, in each, all activities are pursued, and none knows exclusive preferences.
1776
To maintain one's conclusion, without proving it [...] I call that begging the question; which is entirely unworthy of a philosopher.
1715-1716
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
One must suffer the enlightened and impartial criticisms made of the most estimable men or works [...].
1746
To be happy, desire must be neither too strong nor too weak.
1742
To truly know the nature of the people, one must be a prince; and to truly know princes, one must be one of the people.
1513
Metaphysics is a science of the limits of human reason.
1766
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1800
The idea of perfection sterilized French poetry for a century and a half [...].
1926
Let us confess our sins to one another, forgive each other's faults, pray for one another's faults, and we will have, in a way, washed each other's feet.
1263-1264
An old proverb says that it is easier to make a buffoon rich than to make him a gentleman.
81 BC
The progress of society, which enriches all other classes, drives him to despair; civilization itself turns against him alone.
1856
The Coronation of the Virgin
1475
We do not explain, we do not even examine any miracle: we believe in them with a lively and sincere faith.
1764
The contempt of others only reaches the man who already despises himself.
42-43 AD
...which will provide a third convenience to the public of being lit from post to post.
1662
Almost everyone receives their ideas ready-made and follows public opinion their whole life. [...] Servile imitators, who say yes or no according to how they've been prompted, and then believe they have decided for themselves.
4th century BC
Statuette of Herakles
3rd century BCE–2nd century CE
Art is art only when it is its own end, absolutely free, when it knows no higher laws than its own, the laws of truth and beauty.
1842-1845
The face of the entire universe, which remains always the same, although it changes in an infinity of ways.
1661-1676
The first truths [...] are propositions so clear that they can be neither proven nor refuted by propositions that are more so.
1805
Pleasure pushes us to do wrong, and pain leads us to flee duty and the good.
4th century BC
Saint Nicholas of Bari
mid-1430s
The harmony of these two attributes [judgment and spirit] is essential for great men, to provide them with [...] resources that are both certain and prompt.
1636
The most beautiful, most pleasant, and most necessary of all our knowledge is undoubtedly the knowledge of ourselves.
1674-1675
See if he has more integrity than you, if he has more conscience and honor than you. You will find that he does not.
c. 108 AD
The gentleman of yesteryear is for us now nothing more than a dilettante, and we refuse to grant any moral value to dilettantism.
1893
A Man and a Woman on Horseback
ca. 1653–54
Being a just man, he will be as happy a slave as he is free.
100-120 AD
The role of our body is to screen from consciousness everything that would be of no practical interest to us, everything that does not lend itself to our action.
1919
He avoids war for naught, who cannot enjoy peace; and he flees pain for naught, who has no means to savor rest.
1580
History is nothing more than a compilation of the depositions made by the assassins concerning their victims and themselves.
1943
Spear-butt, spike
ca. 1050–1000 BCE
The gentle nightingale [...] carves out a thousand chattering warbles from under the shade [...].
1546/1563
The principle of the modern movement in morals and politics is that conduct, and conduct alone, gives the right to respect; [...] that merit, not birth, is the only legitimate title to the exercise of power.
1869
God [...] is, in short, nothing but a clumsy prohibition: Thinking is forbidden!
1888
The moment there is a master, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic is destroyed.
1762
Implement, cone-shaped
7000 BCE - 330 CE