We pass from a crude life to a simple life, and from a simple life to a soft life through a series of things that habit makes necessary for us.
1776
The storehouse of memory is often more furnished with material than that of invention.
1580
An enlightened sovereign never regarded arbitrary power [...] as the real constitution of a state.
1772
Those who are capable of inventing are rare; those who do not invent are in greater number, and, consequently, the stronger [...].
1746
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
1530
[Education] creates a new human being within us [...], made of all that is best in us, of all that gives value and dignity to life.
1922
'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
When I imagine, I assemble differently ideas that I have already had; [...] but all this by virtue of my perceiving them and making judgments about them.
1817
[...] we can never, with all our reason, go beyond the field of experience.
1783
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1650
The sole end for which mankind are warranted [...] in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. [...] The only legitimate purpose is to prevent harm to others.
1859
Because a book has corrupted parts, is that a reason to regard all the rest as suspect? Has a book ever been found that was entirely free from faults?
1670
Very good remedies are made with poisons, but it is not the poisons that make us live.
1764
Every moment of the worker's life, of his existence, is thus more and more integrated into the hideous traffic.
1849
Bathsheba at Her Bath
ca. 1700
A writer so full of research, so clear, so abundant, and who puts so much soul into everything he says, could he not be truly profound!
45 BC
One will never say that someone is more or less clothed or more or less shod by reason of a single shoe or a single garment.
c. 1270
This study [...] does not occupy me enough to cause me sorrow.
1643-1649
[...] Caesar's wife must be free not only from any shameful action, but also from any suspicion.
100-120 AD
Stucco relief panel
2nd half of 1st century CE
It is enough for a person to think of us strongly and passionately to arouse in our brain the vision of their form [...] as a bodily vision, which one could not distinguish from reality.
1836
If I become aware of this loss of my faculties, and I displease myself, how could I still find pleasure in living?
4th century BC
There is nothing which is, in itself, beautiful or ugly, worthy of love or hatred [...] these different qualifications depend solely on the sentiments and affections of each man [...].
1742
[Magic] is found everywhere for those who want to see it there.
1623
Bronze statuette of a comic actor
ca. 1st–2nd century CE
It is a king's lot to be well, and to hear it said that one is unwell.
c. 108 AD
All mental effort is indeed a tendency towards monoideism. But the unity towards which the mind then moves is not an abstract, dry, and empty unity. It is the unity of a 'guiding idea'.
1919
[One must keep] the spelling with its quirks, [and only modify] the punctuation when the text becomes clearer as a result.
1643-1662
There can be no doubt that we are naturally free, since we are all companions, and it cannot enter anyone's mind that nature has placed anyone in servitude [...].
c. 1552-1553
Key
1st century CE
As if it were not better to live a novel than to write one, as if, after all, to write a good novel, one did not first have to live it!
1926
Our passions not only disguise their main object from us, but also all the things that have some relation to it.
1674-1675
The past, he grasps it through memory; the present, he knows how to use; the future, he enjoys it in advance. His life is long, because [...] he concentrates all times into one.
c. 49 AD
In the body of Tuo the Ugly, there lived a perfect latent virtue. It was this virtue that drew people to him, despite the repulsive form of his body.
4th century BC
Man with a Tankard
1650
[David] was rebellious, lecherous, an adulterer, a murderer, etc., but he was very devout and very submissive to the Priests, which earned him the name of a man after God's own heart.
1768
The universal, that which applies to all cases, is impossible to perceive, for it is neither a determinate thing, nor a determinate moment; otherwise it would not be a universal.
c. 350 BCE
I am only alone when in a crowd.
1761
A solid and sure judgment, and a spirit all of fire, are [...] qualities that attract the name of prodigy to the man in whom they are united.
1636
Standing male figurine
ca. 750–600 BCE
[One] will find [...] from the supreme God down to the dregs of things, a single connection, binding itself with mutual links and nowhere interrupted; and this is Homer's golden chain.
c. 253-270 AD
To demand that men should constantly use words in the same sense [...] would be to imagine that all men should have the same notions, and speak only of things of which they have clear and distinct ideas.
1689
How could a river not find its way to the sea at last?
1883-1885
All primitive truths of reason or of fact have this in common, that they cannot be proven by anything more certain.
1704
Marble relief with Herakles carrying the Erymanthian Boar
27 BCE–68 CE
Nothing is better suited to win esteem than extraordinary actions or words [...] aimed at the happiness of the people.
1513-1519
It is impossible to do either evil or good with impunity. One is punished for the former by the law, for the latter by envy.
1759-1774
[In a system where] force [...] is everything, it leaves no hope for justice. It doesn't even leave the hope of conceiving it in its truth, since thoughts only reflect the relations of force.
1934
When tyranny is established within a small nation, it is more inconvenient than anywhere else, because, acting in a more restricted circle, it extends to everything.
1835-1840
The Muse: History
ca. 1865