Hence the small number of my works, but also the reflection I have put into them, and the long intervals of time that separate them.
1819
Beauty being as real a good as strength and health, reason does not forbid one from valuing it.
1926
True love is always born from the opinion we have of the goodness and excellence of the object.
c. 1660
[Morals and conscience], which alone truly marks what we are, and which I alone weigh against all the others together.
1580
Terracotta statuette of a veiled woman
2nd century BCE
To enjoy and use [the privilege] [...] fully, peacefully, and perpetually.
1662
If one abandons one's protégés in one circumstance, one discourages all those who might later wish to place themselves under one's aegis.
1513-1519
Perhaps one should abide by the author's judgment, and not needlessly increase the mass of documents [...] that he himself deemed negligible.
1896
It is distressing to be deceived; more distressing to be deceived by one of your own.
81 BC
The Glorification of the Giustiniani Family
1783
Science consists in universal knowledge.
c. 350 BCE
One would have to be certain that bodies are substances and not merely true phenomena like the rainbow.
1686
If one thing is certain, it is that the vices born of inaction are driven out by activity.
63-64 AD
If there is a supreme intelligence [...] let us be assured that it takes pleasure in seeing us fulfill the purpose of our existence, by enjoying all the pleasures for which we were created.
1742
Limestone statue of a male votary holding a bird in the left hand
ca 500–450 BCE
If I knew it was my destiny to be sick, I would go towards the sickness of my own accord.
c. 108 AD
[...] succession is an abstract of the motor effort exerted in space, an effort which, having become conscious, is intention.
1890
All materialism [...] therefore always runs the risk of being led astray into a philosophy of the given, that is, into empiricism.
1841
Laziness is almost always victorious over the love of truth.
1674-1675
The Highland Family
1824
Let us study well the operations of the soul; let us know their full extent, without hiding their weakness from ourselves; [...] let us apply them only to objects within our reach.
1746
The sentiment of justice [...] is the natural feeling of vengeance, applied through intelligence and sympathy, to those evils that harm both us and society at the same time.
1861
The greater frequency of [the most widespread forms of organization] is therefore proof of their superiority.
1895
It is a thousand times easier [...] for an enlightened people to return to barbarism than for a barbarous people to advance a single step towards civilization.
1741-1784
The Afternoon Meal (La Merienda)
ca. 1772
Everyone [...] loves justice in others, and wants them to be just towards them.
1772
To effectively enlighten [democracy] on the imperfection of its laws, the first condition is not to hate it.
1835-1840
No dissension is so great or so dangerous as that which comes from religion: it separates citizens, neighbors, friends, relatives [...], it breaks alliances [...] and penetrates to the depths of hearts to [...] entrench irreconcilable hatreds.
c. 1552-1553
[A monarch] applied himself solely to marking his reign by the perfect felicity of his People.
1627
The Adoration of the Shepherds
probably after 1520
It is thus that scholars have often reasoned about what men of genius have invented.
1756
The entire outer man corresponds [...] to the entire inner man.
1766
It is religion that hatched despots and tyrants; they made bad laws; their example corrupted the great; the great corrupted the people; and the debased people became wretched slaves.
1766
The philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to the state of nature, but none of them has reached it.
1755
Marble votive relief of a horseman
4th–3rd century BCE
If he is a man, he is an animal; if he is an animal, he is a substance; but he is not a substance, therefore he is not a man.
c. 1270
[...] it seems to me that the decision to stay would be on my part an act of my own will.
1942
Patience is the art of hoping.
1747
Metaphysicians [...] have only led minds astray; if they have used violence to support their decisions, they have been the oppressors and enemies of the human race.
1805
Copy after Rubens's "Wolf and Fox Hunt"
ca. 1824–26
I think, therefore I am.
1637
Take away the feeling we have of these qualities [...] and thenceforth all Colors, all Tastes, all Smells, and all Sounds [...] will vanish and cease to exist.
1689
Extraordinary actions can only come from a heart that is also extraordinary.
1636
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
c. 375 BC
Marble fragment of an Ionic column capital from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis
ca. 300 BCE–early 2nd century CE
[One can rise to the pinnacle of glory] by taking one's own nature as the guide for one's life, and not the opinion of the multitude.
100-120 AD
There is today [...] a veritable cult of suffering.
1886
The stars do not produce [...] poverty and wealth, health and sickness, beauty and ugliness, vices and virtues.
c. 253-270 AD
His life is spent standing guard over these useless heaps, in worry and in fear. [...] Is this not true misery? And those who suffer it do not feel it.
4th century BC
Bronze statuette of a satyr and maenad
ca. 510–480 B.C