Morality is capable of Demonstration.
1689
Enjoy your happiness, your glory, and above all the goodness of your character: for the wise, there is no sweeter reward [...].
46 BC
[Good writings] teach us not how to speak well, but how to do well.
1580
It is by the reception of more and less that contrariety is effected [...] as is seen with white and black.
c. 1270
Bronze statuette of a camillus (attendant)
ca. 50 BCE–50 CE
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
We can distinguish four modifications [...] in this act of feeling: those of feeling simply, of remembering, of judging, and of willing.
1817
Lying is the debasement and, as it were, the annihilation of human dignity.
1797-1798
Each of us is good in that in which he is wise, and bad in that in which he is unwise.
c. 380 BC
Buckle
7000 BCE - 330 CE
There would be [...] two different selves, one of which would be like the external projection of the other, its spatial and, so to speak, social representation.
1889
Thus was Rome taken in a surprising manner, and saved in a manner more surprising still.
100-120 AD
...no one will be able to book the said carriages entirely, except by paying for all eight seats.
1662
Well-disposed towards all, when someone does not act as they should, [the transcendent man] points it out through his own correct attitude, thus correcting them without words.
4th century BC
Arm fragment of Aphrodite
30 BCE–CE 364
What is death? A frightening mask. Turn it over; see what it is; you will see that it does not bite.
c. 108 AD
They are domestic enemies, with whom being forced to converse, one is obliged to be constantly on guard, in order to prevent them from causing harm.
1643-1649
If there were no land-based wealth, there would be no movable wealth.
1776
A democratic education is needed to protect woman from the perils with which democratic institutions and morals surround her.
1835-1840
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
1745
We trade [...] not to win gold, or silver, [...] but to acquire the first of God's creatures, which is Light.
1627
Today, as political freedom tends to be restricted, literary freedom follows the same path.
1926
I have, from an early age, distrusted all the decisions of philosophers: & I have always felt more inclined to dispute their dogmas than to embrace them.
1742
Although God does everything that is real and positive in the actions of sinners, [...] God is not the author of sin.
1674-1675
Tripod leg ?
ca. 675–650 BCE
It is impossible that a feeling foreign and contradictory to human nature [...] could have, at all times, been tirelessly described by the genius of poets and could have excited in all men an unalterable sympathy.
1819
I have created the four winds so that every man might breathe like his brother [...] I have created every man like his brother.
1942
One has no right to blame this world, to say that it is not beautiful, that it is not the best possible of corporeal worlds, nor to accuse the cause from which it holds its existence.
c. 253-270 AD
The metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of the symbol.
1872
Gabbro mace head
ca. 2500–1900 BCE
The more defined beliefs and practices are, the less room they leave for individual differences.
1893
Democracy is more stable and less subject to upheavals than oligarchy.
c. 350 BCE
Everything becomes legitimate and even virtuous for the public good.
1758
Far from feasting on acquired glory, [a great heart] forgets it to always seek a new one.
1636
Bronze patera (salver)
ca. 550 BCE
...it is not the storm that torments me, but the seasickness.
49 to 62 A.D.
One transfers admiration from the work to the inventor, just as when we now see that the planets do not need to be guided by intelligences.
1702
Women [...] are the music of life: they know how to accept and assimilate everything [...] frankly and with fewer reservations, to further embellish it with their sympathy.
1896
I would like to go out, and I feel that wherever I might go, I would carry and find boredom there.
1759-1774
Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904)
1861
Certain friendships bring, to those who trust in them, more of a name than real protection (magis nomen quam praesidium).
1513-1519
he found himself obliged to take up his pen once more.
1750
One should consider that we know the cause of impulse no more than that of attraction. We have no more of an idea of one of these forces than of the other.
1738
It is to remedy these inconveniences that this Work is published, which can be regarded as [...] a pocket Theology.
1768
Statuette of a woman
3rd–1st century BCE
True politicians know men better than those who make a profession of philosophy; I mean that they are truer philosophers.
1746
In its regard, there is nothing beautiful or ugly, good or bad, perfect or imperfect.
17th century
God is only the fictitious projection of man.
1841
The ultimate sanction of all morality (external motives apart) is a subjective feeling in our own minds.
1861
Aegina Visited by Jupiter
ca. 1767–69