There is no one who is happy in all things.
329-323 BC
[The Senate] always made a sound judgment of things; it always regarded the least disastrous course of action as the best.
1513-1519
What is the use of seeking darkness, of fleeing the eyes and ears of others?
63-64 AD
It is not a flaw in a limited mind to not know certain things; it is only a flaw to judge them. Ignorance is a necessary evil, but one can and must avoid error.
1674-1675
Limestone funerary stele of a boy
3900 BCE - 100 CE
God is the efficient cause of things, of their essence as well as of their existence.
1661-1676
The most useful books are those of which the readers themselves make half.
1764
Christianity adds superfluous evils to inevitable evils, [...] bodily sufferings to sufferings of the soul, natural contrasts to unnatural contrasts.
1842-1845
Some have spoken all their lives without saying anything... Some, who were silent their whole lives, have spoken a great deal.
4th century BC
Orpheus and Eurydice
1650
It is clear that there is a great difference between sensation and thought.
1270
Philosophical historiography [...] must differentiate between the mole of true philosophical knowledge that never ceases its work and the chattering phenomenological consciousness [...] of the subject who is the receptacle and energy of these developments.
1841
There are a multitude of acts that have been or still are regarded as criminal, without being in themselves harmful to society.
1893
Love breathes [...] a dormant and covered fire that winter had concealed within our veins.
1546/1563
Still Life with Cheese
probably late 1870s
At whatever price, one must subdue the affections of one's heart, [...] if one aspires to heroism.
1636
The last thing one finds when creating a work [...] is knowing what one must put first.
1663
Before experience, there are the conditions that make experience possible.
1900
Pusillanimity [...] having been unable to join the first act, enters the stage for the second: that of massacre and blood.
1580
Bronze jug
ca. 1st century BCE–1st century CE
[...] it is not the truth, it is the image that excites the passion: a well-acted tragedy affects as much as the sight of a murder.
1772
What is more rational than to see those who have worked for a thing have more of that thing for which they have worked?
c. 108 AD
Under the influence of contemplated truth, man now perceives everywhere only the horror and absurdity of existence.
1872
By this means [man] no more increases his knowledge than he increases his riches who, taking a bag of counters [...] names one a Crown, another a Pound [...] without however being richer by a mite.
1689
Bronze statuette of an actor
ca. 1st–2nd century CE
I would rather die than slavishly beg for my life and be granted an existence far more dreadful than death.
4th century BC
Men do not always agree in their judgments on the utility of an action, or of a custom...
1751
It is with extravagant zeal and powerless efforts that men gather to perform intellectual work, expecting everything [...] from the superiority of genius.
1620
It seems to me rigorously proven that many judgments had to be made before a single articulated sign was created.
1801
Marble stele (grave marker) of a woman
ca. 375–350 BCE
Why is it that men never make syllogisms to themselves when they are seeking the truth or teaching it to those who sincerely desire to know it?
1704
Praise is a tribute that youth willingly pays to merit, and which mature age will always refuse it.
1772
Why then is it a crime to be sensitive to merit, and to love what one must honor?
1761
The imagination may perhaps be excused if it sometimes raves [...]. But that the understanding, whose business it is to think, should instead rave, is something that can never be forgiven.
1783
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
Ever since people have been writing about luxury, some have praised it, others have satirized it, and nothing is proven. This is because no one seeks to understand each other.
1776
One does not see [...] how a mode of production based on the subordination of those who execute to those who coordinate could fail to produce a social structure defined by the dictatorship of a bureaucratic caste.
1934-1942
His faith, very sincere in his later years, in no way prevented him from imagining, in words, the most beautiful blasphemies.
1926
Shame! The morality of Pariahs [...] which fails to recognize the eternal essence, present in all that has life, the essence which shines in every eye open to the light of the sun [...].
1840
Steatite (?) pendant in the form of a bull's head
ca. 2200–1050 BCE
The Roman Empire [...] turned its arms against itself, less because of the ambition of its leaders [...] than because of the avarice and licentiousness of the soldiers, who drove them out one after another, as one nail drives out another.
100-120 AD
This very pathetic drama produced the usual effect of wringing the heart and causing abundant tears. There were as many handkerchiefs as spectators.
1758
Such is the blessed condition of the intelligible world that in doing nothing it does great things, and in remaining within itself it produces important works.
c. 253-270 AD
Wisdom knows how to effortlessly bring together all conditions and all ages [...].
1746
Limestone statuette of Geryon
probably early 5th century BCE
[One must] understand that [the salvation of all] is tied to [that of one], and that on the life of one depends the life of all citizens.
46 BC
Utility is the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.
1859
Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but the very disinterested or the very mediocre who wish to decentralize power. The first are rare and the second are powerless.
1835-1840
I am on a continuous journey.
1643-1649
Tobias Curing His Father's Blindness
1630–35