Books are merely assemblages of words. Words convey ideas. But true ideas derive from a non-sensible principle, and can hardly [...] be expressed in words.
4th century BC
Those who are capable of inventing are rare; those who do not invent are in greater number, and, consequently, the stronger [...].
1746
This man knows how to think and write; but [...] he feels nothing and experiences not the slightest torment.
1741-1784
Chauvinism is a plant that reaches [...] tropical proportions.
1926
Bronze statuette of a bull
early 5th century BCE
Every human life [...] is, as a rule, nothing other than a series of aborted hopes, disappointed plans, and errors recognized too late.
1851
'We recognize the principle of the decline of humanity, and consequently the necessity of its regeneration; we believe in the possibility of this regeneration [...].'
1896
Being a just man, he will be as happy a slave as he is free.
100-120 AD
No sooner is the victory over the common enemy won than the victors find themselves divided among themselves and turn their weapons against each other.
1851-1852
Limestone chest with incised decoration
8th century BCE?
The opposite virtue [to frivolity] is gravity or steadfastness; the attainment of the goal being its principal pleasure, it serves to direct and retain all other thoughts on the path that leads to it.
1772
The weak rarely have confidence in the justice and reason of the strong.
1835-1840
We have tried to rebuild it, without claiming to explain it absolutely.
c. 1552-1553
[...] you are free in a good room from which you cannot leave.
1772
Peasants Dancing and Feasting
ca. 1660
Every community is one body that is in the state of nature in relation to all other states.
1690
Ridiculous piety, which, under the pretext of explaining one passage of the Bible by other passages, subordinates the clear places to the obscure ones, the true and sound parts to those that are altered and corrupted!
1670
Wherever there are men sensitive to passions, and where imagination is the master of reason, there is strangeness, and an incomprehensible strangeness.
1674-1675
[The man born blind] for a long time distinguished neither sizes, nor distances, nor situations, nor even figures. [...] All that he saw, at first seemed to be upon his eyes, and to touch them.
1746
Tobias Curing His Father's Blindness
1630–35
The course of time is but the distinction between the wanted and the possessed [...].
1890
Everything can change its appearance in this world, because everything is subject to growth and decline.
1636
If the necessary being is not, there is no possible being.
Late 17th - early 18th century
Be not wiser than is necessary, but be wise with sobriety.
1580
Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834)
1785
At the sound of arms the laws fall silent, and, as men return to their depraved inclinations, the fields are ravaged and the cities overturned.
1620
We should not say that an act offends the common conscience because it is criminal, but that it is criminal because it offends the common conscience. [...] It is a crime because we condemn it.
1893
The fate that actually befalls us rarely resembles the one we promised ourselves; at every step we take, we find our expectations disappointed.
1760
A truth is always the result of just comparisons of the resemblances and differences [...] perceived between various objects.
1772
Limestone statuette of Zeus Ammon
early 5th century BCE
[Science] is not an end [...] but a means for each man. The time has come not to seek to extend it, but to think it.
1932-1942
To believe in Jesus Christ is, therefore, to love Him in believing, to unite faith with love, to unite oneself to Him through faith and become part of the body of which He is the head.
1263-1264
I have always thought that we must concern ourselves with peace, and I have seen with sorrow that it was rejected [...].
46 BC
Impossibilities have been imagined, which is a fault; but it is correct if the goal of the art is achieved.
c. 335 BC
Limestone head of a girl
3rd century BCE
Only the foolish are loud; wise women make no sensation.
1762
I tremble that the hope you feed me might dissipate into smoke.
1518
Everything that causes our moans, our terrors, is a tribute of life.
63-64 AD
In all moral determinations, the circumstance of public utility is always what is principally in view.
1751
The Conversion of Saint Paul
1440
[The ancient sages] regard sacred traditions as vague and instinctive premonitions of a higher truth [...] and attribute the obscurity that envelops them to the infancy of human thought.
c. 253-270 AD
Any company that does not elevate, debases; and the more intimate and familiar it is, the more it has this result.
1869
Wounded and halted by his own victory?
1886
We too must [...] be able to converse with ourselves; to do without others; to need no distraction; to reflect [...] on our relationship with the rest of the world.
c. 108 AD
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
Our pure sensations or simple ideas are absolutely and completely real, certain, and immune to all error, because they consist solely in the infallible feeling we have of them.
1805
Knowledge, whether it deals with the past, the present, or the future, is always the same.
c. 380 BC
[On this subject,] I leave much more than I give; it is a strange thing how fertile it is in properties. Everyone may try their hand at it.
1643-1662
For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well.
1637
Marble portrait bust of a boy
ca. 35–50 CE