The social state is [...] the primary cause of most of the laws, customs, and ideas that regulate the conduct of nations; what it does not produce, it modifies.
1835-1840
It is we ourselves who are the will to live: that is why we feel the need to live, whether well or badly.
1819
[...] he who understands what a body is, understands it as a compound of parts outside one another, some high, others low, some to the right, others to the left, a compound that is long, wide, deep [...].
1653-1662
A great man fears infamy alone, and that suffering only frightens [...] men with the hearts of women.
1st Century A.D.
Marble bust of a bearded man
ca. 150–175 CE
Nothing can cure my love, and everything increases my sadness.
1752
Everything happens mechanically. A rupture of equilibrium in the social mass gives rise to conflicts that can only be resolved by a more developed division of labor: such is the motor of progress.
1893
To believe that the existence of the world is explained by a creator is a psychological illusion.
1841
What I am now, perhaps I have always been.
1968
Allegory of the Catholic Faith
ca. 1670–72
Laughter [...] is a kind of joy.
c. 1660
Superior talents, unshaken courage [...] only expose one to envy; but when these qualities are joined with humanity and beneficence, envy itself is silenced.
1751
God is dead: but, given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.
1882
It is [...] the well-examined particular facts, and the just judgments we make of them, that are the principle of all truth.
1817
Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis
1495
At a first glance, everyone will be convinced that all Theological truths are linked.
1768
Every community is one body that is in the state of nature in relation to all other states.
1690
[She was] a very respectable woman, who often bored him, and whom he saw more willingly in his council than in his private apartments.
circa 1748
[The author] proposes to show not that the two sexes are equivalent, but that they are equal, that woman is capable of the same culture as man, of the same work, of the same virtues.
1926
Castle by a River
1647
We must examine whether the nature of generation and that of alteration are the same, or if they are distinct in reality, as they are by the names that designate them.
c. 350 B.C.E.
Let us ask of each thing only what we should expect from it by virtue of its own nature.
c. 108 AD
I lost my kingdom twice; but Providence has given me another state in which I have done more good than all the kings [...] could ever have done.
1759
My virtue is a virtue, or rather an innocence, that is accidental and fortuitous.
1580
Head of Saint John the Baptist
1636
While others buy the objects of their pleasures at great expense [...], I procure for myself, without spending anything, the pleasures of the soul, which are purer [...].
4th century BC
[One must have] the inclination [...] to look at things that present themselves from the angle that can make them the most agreeable.
1643-1649
The multitude believes more in persons than in things, and [...] is more persuaded by the authority of the speaker than by the reasons he gives.
c. 1552-1553
Religion, whether in relation to mysteries or to morals, depends entirely on divine revelation.
1623
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ
1370–88
The domination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself.
1847
To have a right is to have something which society ought to guarantee me the possession of.
1861
Great thoughts come from the heart.
1747
Delaying [a project] that is to become the first successful example [...] is the same as sowing the seed before maturity, and later harvesting weeds.
1777
Young Woman in a Blue and Black Dress
ca. 1863 (?)
It is above all exclusive pleasures that make simplicity disappear.
1776
Each phenomenon is the sign of another phenomenon, and by virtue of this universal coordination, the stars indicate future events.
c. 253-270 AD
Diogenes of Babylon, a Stoic, [was sent as] deputy from the Athenians to Rome.
45 BC
Duration, thus restored to its original purity, will appear as a wholly qualitative multiplicity, an absolute heterogeneity of elements which melt into one another.
1889
Christ Bearing the Cross
1489
When a people is given over to all the furies of popular upheavals, it is not its rampages that one fears [...] one trembles to see a tyrant rise from the midst of the disorders.
1513-1519
I couldn't teach it to my son, and at seventy years old, to have a good wheel, I still have to make it myself.
4th century BC
Adversity [...] is close to a good outcome when it becomes extreme.
1636
There is a double consequence: [...] in the affirmation, when one proceeds by affirming the antecedent, and in the contrary, when one proceeds by the destruction of the consequent.
c. 1270
Hoof, cow
7000 BCE - 330 CE
If the prince's religion becomes the religion of his subjects, the prince's reason will also become the reason of his subjects; and thus the prince's sentiments will always be in fashion.
1674-1675
All external joys lack a foundation; but the joy of which I speak [...] is substantial.
63-64 AD
Discipline is, so to speak, only the art of inspiring in soldiers more fear of their officers than of the enemy.
1758
Should an evident quality be called occult, because its immediate cause is perhaps occult, or has not yet been discovered?
1715-1716
Two Young Peasant Women
1891–92