The limit, which implies the notion of equilibrium, is the first law of the manifested world; hierarchy is the second.
1932-1942
Must we therefore entrust the practice of all virtues of this class to the sure, though blind, instinct of feeling and taste?
1751
[Trials], as soon as they existed and Hercules found them, served to reveal and to exercise him.
c. 108 AD
A Magistrate [...] must have not only chaste hands, but also chaste eyes.
1580
Marble statue of a kouros (youth)
ca. 590–580 BCE
It is with reason that the Philosophers place Riches in intelligible things, and Poverty in sensible things.
c. 253-270 AD
Thought is an action and cannot be the essence: but it is an essential action, and all substances have such.
1704
It is a thousand times easier [...] for an enlightened people to return to barbarism than for a barbarous people to advance a single step towards civilization.
1741-1784
Because the individual personality has developed [...], there are more possible attacks against it; but the sentiment they offend is always the same.
1893
Fragmentary terracotta relief of a reclining figure
late 6th–early 5th century BCE
Nothing great admits of mediocrity.
1746
How much better it is to thank heaven for the joys it has permitted us; instead of calculating the years of others, to appreciate one's own well, and count them as gains!
1st century AD
God, forming the world by his thought [...] man, the image of God through thought [...], all these great and vivid images dazzled the subjugated imagination.
1764
Revealed belief corrupts [...] the moral sense, [...] unfortunately it does even more, it treacherously poisons the sense of truth, which is the most precious, the most delicate, the most divine in our being. Therein lies its true crime against humanity.
1841
The Nymph of Fontainebleau
1550
A revelation that were true [...] should be clear enough to be understood by all of humankind.
1766
[A heroic heart] wanted no middle ground between All or Nothing.
1636
In large cities, depravity begins with life, and in small ones, it begins with reason.
1762
In order to [...] give a guide to direct them to their destination, we send [an expert].
1498
The Forest at Pontaubert
1881
The safest course is to accustom children early to the fatigue of attention: this habit is the most real advantage one draws [...] from the best studies.
1772
It is only by listening to the philosopher that the theologian can be armed in advance against all the difficulties that the former could create for him.
1793
The animal can never stray [...] from the path of nature; into our abstract concepts, on the contrary, can enter [...] the false, the impossible, the absurd, and the senseless.
1819
The omnipotence of the majority seems to me such a great peril for the American republics, that the dangerous means used to limit it still seems to me a good thing.
1835-1840
Limestone head of a girl
3rd century BCE
Our religion has glorified only humble and contemplative men, not men of action.
1926
It seems [...] that envy is limitless in its aversions, just as sick eyes are hurt by everything that casts a bright light.
c. 72-126 AD
Madmen do not pass for what they are among the mad who resemble them, but only among reasonable men.
1674-1675
It is by having built religion on diverse foundations that the apostles gave rise to the numerous discords and schisms which, since their time, have ceaselessly torn the Church apart [...].
1670
Marble portrait of Matidia Minor
ca. 138–161 CE
The actions of an animate being are the necessary signs of its ideas. Its fellows [...] judge what it feels by what it does.
1805
The populace draws the false conclusion that one must obey superiors only in things good in themselves, and then attributes to itself the judgment of what is good or bad, and finally [...] has no other law than its own conscience.
c. 1552-1553
To assertions that seem contradictory, one must immediately provide a solution [...] before the adversary follows up with a new question.
329-323 BC
Society [...] practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since [...] it penetrates much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaves the soul itself.
1859
L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien, 1848–1911)
1888–89
To see is to undergo something.
c. 1270
One will find much more happiness in the world than somber eyes see, [...] if only one does not forget those moments of good cheer with which every day in every human life is rich [...].
1878
Others do not so much impress upon things the image of their mind as that of their passions, never losing sight of the interest of their party [...].
1623
In the secondary States, where things had taken a comparatively quiet turn, the bourgeoisie had long since thrown themselves back into that noisy, but fruitless, parliamentary agitation which was most congenial to them.
1851-1852
Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx
ca. 530 BCE
[Some] found the author's style too archaic and sometimes too brutal.
1643-1662
[The operation] filled the cities with idle and useless people, who nevertheless subsisted at the expense of the state.
1776
This proves not only that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at all.
1637
Therefore, what you are describing is not a part of virtue, but virtue as a whole.
c. 380 BC
Bronze batillum (incense shovel)
late 1st–early 2nd century CE
If the years seem so long in youth and so short in old age, it is [...] because the impressions of youth are vivid, new, and numerous.
1890
This kind of [intuitive] Knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of.
1689
All those whose lives are in the hands of others think more of what the one on whom their fate depends can do, than what he ought to do.
81 BC
The most lamentable of deaths is the death of the heart; it is far worse than the death of the body.
4th century BC
Cymbal
7000 BCE - 330 CE