It is artificial, unnatural science that has caused all the evils of this world, and the misfortune of all who inhabit it.
4th century BC
Passion is better than stoicism and hypocrisy; that being honest, even in evil, is better than losing oneself out of respect for conventional morality.
1876
Each phenomenon is the sign of another phenomenon, and by virtue of this universal coordination, the stars indicate future events.
c. 253-270 AD
An excessive confidence in one's own mind [...] leads to dogmatizing.
1620
Castle by a River
1647
No one is unhappy because of another's actions.
c. 108 AD
Fools were created for the amusement of the wise; one must laugh at them.
1775-1784
Since [...] social phenomena escape the experimenter's control, the comparative method is the only one suitable for sociology.
1895
All good maxims are in the world, [...] one only has to apply them; but that is very difficult.
1746
Fragment of a limestone relief with two standing figures
4th–3rd century BCE
A hundred villages must be ruined to amuse one idle person.
1772
If, like truth, falsehood had only one face, we should be on better terms [...]. But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field.
1580
The high aristocracy and the financial bourgeoisie [...] were able to maintain their predominant influence on the Government, [...] thanks to the horror of 'anarchy' which spread rapidly among the middle classes.
1851-1852
There is no law in nature for the annihilation of any being, because nothingness has nothing beautiful or good, and the author of nature loves his work.
1674-1675
Hinge
3900 BCE - 100 CE
All the movements we make without our will contributing to them [...] depend only on the conformation of our members [...] in the same way that the movement of a watch is produced by the sole force of its spring and the shape of its wheels.
1649
Is Hamlet's monologue the meditation of a crime? It simply says that if we were certain of being absolutely annihilated by death, it [...] would undoubtedly be preferable.
1851
The Bible does not owe its character as a holy book to the words and discourses it contains, or to the language in which it is written, but to the very things that intelligence discovers in it.
1670
[An author]: his genius and his errors.
1855
Relief from casket
670 BCE - 330 CE
To be free is to place one's soul above injury; it is to make oneself such that one finds the source of one's pleasures in oneself alone.
c. 55
Just as a banknote is only a promise of gold, so a concept is valuable only for the eventual perceptions it represents.
1934
Of such horrible things, it is not only the effect and the execution, but the possibility, the expectation, the very idea which is unworthy of a citizen [...] and of a free man.
63 BC
[Men] will establish, alongside the great political society, small private societies, bound together by the similarity of their conditions, habits, and customs.
1835-1840
Pendant: Head of Acheloos?
5th century BCE
As they spare no one, so no one spares them; and were they at the height of elevation, the last of men will believe himself entitled to strike at them.
1636
There is scarcely any absurdity or mischief which may not be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
1861
If one denies the difference of the intellect among all men [...] it follows that nothing of men's souls remains after death [...] and that there is neither punishment nor reward.
1270
Thus, only my hypothesis remains, that is, the way of harmony.
1696
Upper part of a female limestone votary
2nd or 3rd quarter of the 6th century BCE
[He] felt that the glory to which he aspired was a limitless thing, and had no end that one could reach.
100-120 AD
The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south, yet these two rivers spring from the same mountain, and are consequently driven by the same principle...
1751
Whoever considers the errors, the confusion [...] and the darkness that the misuse of Words has spread in the World, will find some reason to doubt whether Language [...] has contributed more to advance or to interrupt the knowledge of Truth.
1689
The curses of scoundrels are the glory of the just man.
1782-1789
Landscape Study with Clouds
ca. 1829–31
Is not pleasure most often an absence of pain?
c. 360 BC
Let us only win peace and not worry that it be poor: if we have war, nothing is enough; if we have peace, nothing will be lacking.
c. 1552-1553
He wanted to work more on touching and disposing the heart than on convincing and persuading the mind; because he knew that the passions [...] that corrupt the heart are the greatest obstacles [...] to faith.
1670
Indeed, all that is evident, whether by natural reason or by supernatural revelation, is not called faith; [...] it is not said that we believe but that we know the things that are evident.
1772
Saint Francis
1450s
There is no other difference between [the mind and the heart] than that of a greater or lesser degree of energy and liveliness; but it is always feeling.
1805
The human head is properly a drum that resonates only because it is empty.
1764
One must [...] construct dramatic fables [...] around a single, whole, and complete action, having a beginning, a middle, and an end.
c. 335 BC
The love that God has for me is nothing other than my own self-love deified and personified.
1841
Marble bust of a youth
ca. 140 CE
Land will be valuable wherever agriculture enjoys complete freedom; and then the population [...] will be as large as it can be. That is the prosperity of the State.
1776
All that is new is good, and all that is unknown is new, all that is distant is new. The more a literary work differs from present literary trends, the greater its nutritional value will be.
1926
It is no longer in the power of these masses to give their inner consent to the authority they endure.
1943
Empedocles was not so wrong to regard fire as the principle of nature. [...] it is a king who makes all his subjects act.
1764
Limestone head of beardless male votary with wreath of leaves
early 2nd century BCE(?)