I have read your Experiments concerning the void, which I consider very beautiful and ingenious, but I do not understand this apparent void that appears in the tube [...].
1653-1662
The first object of self-love is [...] to ward off any unpleasant feeling; and it is through this that it tends towards the conservation of the individual.
1755
Springs gush forth naturally. The superior man is so spontaneously. The sky is high, the earth is thick, the sun and moon are bright, all this without a formula.
4th century BC
Science consists in universal knowledge.
c. 350 BCE
Bronze shield boss
8th–7th century BCE
The bond of love emerges from the forge either strong enough to withstand all shocks or fragile enough to yield to the slightest push. It is a chance one must take [...].
1926
So many men, so many boroughs, so many cities, so many nations sometimes endure a single tyrant, who has no power other than that which they give him.
c. 1552-1553
From half-century to half-century, the men who have made their mark in the sciences have become more specialized.
1893
Doubtless, one must be truthful in both praise and history; but, whether historian or orator, one must be neither monotonous nor cold.
1741-1784
Bronze shield boss
7th century BCE
The entire history of social progress consists in the series of transitions that lead a custom or institution to pass from the rank of a primary necessity [...] to that of a universally condemned injustice.
1861
Have you thoroughly examined any of their thoughts, and have you formed your own conviction on the matter?
c. 108 AD
God does not exist in space or in time; but His existence is the cause of space and time.
1715-1716
[The words of certain authors], as dead as they are, have more vigor than the reason of some people. They enter, [...] they dominate the soul in such an imperious way that they make themselves obeyed without being understood.
1674-1675
Rock crystal bead with striations
ca. 2200–1450 BCE
Conceiving is a last resort in cases where one cannot perceive, and reasoning is only necessary insofar as one must fill the gaps in perception.
1911
The course of an individual's life, however complicated it may appear, forms an orderly whole, having its determined tendency and its meaningful significance, just like the most carefully composed epic.
1836
Under a God who has revealed himself only to confound human reason, everything must be incomprehensible, everything must defy common sense.
1766
Not only do men who live in democratic societies find it difficult to meditate, but they naturally have little esteem for it.
1835-1840
Portrait of a Monk in Prayer
1495
For my part, I am ready to learn with the children, without worrying about my age or my reputation.
c. 380 BC
I would never have spoken to you of my misfortunes, [...] if it were not the custom, on a ship, to tell stories to relieve boredom.
1759
It takes great qualities to make a hero.
1636
Each part of the air contains the entire visible object: now this cannot be explained by a corporeal affection, but by higher laws, proper to the soul [...].
c. 253-270 AD
Head of a comic figurine
late 4th–3rd century BCE
Nascent despotism lets you say anything, as long as it is allowed to do anything. But entrenched despotism forbids speaking, thinking, and writing.
1772
The motive force of a body towards a place, and an equal effort, though in the opposite direction, do not contradict each other [...]. The consequence is rest, which is something.
1763
Anything that has the effect of uprooting a human being or preventing them from taking root is criminal.
1957
Certain losses communicate to the soul a sublimity that makes it abstain from all complaint and walk in silence, like tall black cypresses.
1881
A Female Allegorical Figure
ca. 1740–50
Liberty and the public good perish when a small number of men decide everything by their passion alone.
1677
The world is nothing but variety and dissimilarity.
1580
The practical intellect is compared to artificial things, as the measure to the thing measured; conversely, the speculative intellect is compared to the things it conceives as the thing measured to the measure.
c. 1270
[...] what she loved was the beautiful, it was the good, it was a hero.
100-120 AD
Portrait of a Man, Possibly Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586), Duke of Parma and Piacenza
1563
[...] nothing is easier than going to hell, because the path is always downhill and one goes with one's eyes closed.
1512-1527
The savings bank system is a triple machine of despotism: [...] the savings bank is the golden chain by which the government holds a large part of the workers.
1849
Only the absolute necessity of moral principles for the maintenance of society can keep these principles pure in our minds.
1757
A benefit is a social act that earns us an obliged person, a friend; giving to oneself has nothing social about it [...].
1st century AD
Bronze stamp
1st–2nd century CE
Invention is the sole proof of genius.
1746
I confess that it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul, than the capacity to move a body and be moved by it, to an immaterial being.
1643-1649
All capitals are alike, all peoples mingle in them, all customs are jumbled together; it is not there that one should go to study nations.
1762
God is the essence of objectified imagination, he is the personification and deification of our imagination [...].
1841
John Gray (1731–1811) of Newholm
1776
I abandoned my homeland so that it would not be stained with the blood of citizens.
September 57 BC
Is it not natural that, weary of all the evils [...], they should at last persuade themselves that it is lawful for them to repel force with force, and to take up arms for the defense of their rights.
1686
The faculty of thinking [...] consists in feeling sensations, memories, relationships, and desires.
1801
One prevents the destruction of a thing by bringing it back to its principles.
1623
Wheat Fields
ca. 1670