All things have sympathy for one another through their irrational life.
c. 253-270 AD
It was my destiny to enter it against my will, and to leave it in the same manner.
1782-1789
Self-love, the different opposing interests [...], the discussions that result from them in society, have obliged men to establish the laws of justice, in order to preserve the advantages of mutual assistance and protection.
1751
According to nature, they are separate; according to civilization and according to poetry, they are united.
1926
Statuette of a warrior-11
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
[...] it is even in religion that one seeks a remedy for this boredom.
1772
It is not knowing how to live to examine what they [the great] put forward: it is to lose respect to doubt it.
1674-1675
In taking up arms, the working class was fully aware that this was not its own direct struggle, but it followed the tactic [...] of not allowing any class that had risen on its shoulders [...] to consolidate its class rule, without at least opening up a wide field for the working class to fight for its own interests.
1851-1852
It is always four or five who maintain the tyrant, four or five who keep the whole country in servitude.
c. 1552-1553
Marble fragments of a statue of the emperor Caracalla
ca. 217–230 CE
Some are born virtuous, it is true; but care, reflection, and effort can give to others what nature has denied them.
1636
It is a mistake to imagine that, among great personages, new benefits cause old injuries to be forgotten.
1855
Who speaks with affectation, if not one who wishes to be a tasteless speaker?
63-64 AD
The notion we have of pure substance in general [...] is none other than that of a 'we know not what' which is entirely unknown to us, supposed to be the support of the qualities we perceive.
1689
Cloud Study (Distant Storm)
ca. 1786–1806
He who is one with this unity [...] regards his body as he would dust, and life and death as he would day and night.
4th century BC
A grave author is one whose opinions are followed in contentious matters.
1764
The immediate cause of the inability to learn is prejudice, and the cause of prejudice is a false opinion of our own knowledge.
1772
Even misfortune has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune elevates a courageous spirit, and makes it gather all its forces which it was not using.
1746
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1800
Ambitious characters [...] find, in the jealousy inspired in them against their equals by the love of glory, a great obstacle to the noble deeds they could perform.
100-120 AD
The intellect is not originally destined to instruct us in the essence of things, but only to show us their relations to our will.
1819
In our day, the human mind must be kept to theory; it runs of its own accord to practice.
1835-1840
Nothing should be disdained that pertains to the history of our customs; we like to know how those who preceded us did things.
1662
Relief from casket
670 BCE - 330 CE
To punish without hatred when the crime exists, to forget all prejudice when it does not.
66 BC
Imagining that, to penetrate the secrets of nature, it was enough to meditate with obstinacy, to turn one's mind, so to speak, in every direction, and to keep it in perpetual agitation.
1620
The powerful are more jealous of honor and braver than the rich, because they aim for actions that their power allows them to accomplish.
329-323 BC
The word of man is divine, in other words: it is an immense and incommensurable power like thought, of which it is the invisible body.
1841
Agnes Sewell
possibly ca. 1800
The people [...] regarded the merchants [...] as greedy men who took advantage of their needs. Once this opinion was established, one could no longer, if jealous of one's reputation, engage in this trade.
1776
Individuals can only be subject to a collective despotism; for the members of a society can only be dominated by a force superior to them, and there is only one that has this quality: that of the group.
1893
The idea of duty is inseparable from that of rights: a duty is what, in one being, corresponds to the rights of another. Where there are no rights, there are no duties.
1797
It is equality of origin that compels us to seek an equality founded on law.
c. 387 BC
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1680
Since nothing is stable in us, a health too flourishing [...] is to be contained and weakened with art, for fear [...] that it results in too sudden a backward movement which causes disorders.
1580
Start by making sure no one knows what you are; for some time, be a philosopher for yourself alone.
c. 108 AD
Through obscure instruments, with great difficulty, a small number of men going towards their images perceive the essence of the model.
1953
The metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of the symbol.
1872
Cavalier and Shepherd
1747
It is the same innovation that reduced physics to geometry, and which founded it on comparisons with the phenomena made familiar to us by common experience [...].
17th century
It is with words that we reason about ideas [...]. What we call reasoning is to make judgments that follow from the first ones.
1805
One cherishes a passion far more for the sorrows it consoles than for the pleasures it gives.
1760
It is not the notion of determining causality, but that of free causality, that we draw from the pure and simple observation of ourselves.
1900
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1515
It is generally admitted that it is just for a person to receive (good or evil) what they deserve, and unjust for them to receive the good or suffer the evil they do not deserve.
1861
No created substance can by itself be a sufficient principle of action [...].
c. 1270
When the mind focuses on an idea with great application, considering it from all sides [...] this is what is called study or contention of mind.
1704
If there are foolishly credulous writers, people devoid of common sense [...] the copies should not be so rare; a single one would suffice to resolve the question.
17th century
The Smoker
ca. 1623–25