The tribunal and the prison are different places [...]; but your judgment and your will can remain the same in either, if you wish.
c. 108 AD
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
If only one story is treated in the epic, [...] the work seems shortened, or else [...] it seems diluted.
c. 335 BC
The pursuit of pleasure is permitted. Why deprive oneself of it when these pleasures do no harm to society?
1772
Portrait of a Man, Possibly Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586), Duke of Parma and Piacenza
1563
Most of the souls of the unfortunate mortals [...] complained [...] that they were condemned to this eternal misfortune only for having taken a wife.
1518-1527
Hierarchy is exclusively a social thing. It is only in society that there are superiors, inferiors, and equals.
1912
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
c. 375 BC
The love that consumes him is no longer simply the love of a man for God, it is the love of God for all men. Through God, by God, he loves all of humanity with a divine love.
1932
Marble architectural fragment with palmette from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis
3rd or 2nd century BCE
For dying, which is the greatest task we have to do, practice cannot help us. [...] we are all apprentices when we come to it.
1580
The art [...] that no one can mark the limits of your capacity will remain [...] fruitless if you do not add to it the art of hiding the affections of your heart.
1636
...which lanterns shall have multiple lights, to be distinguished from those of the citizens, and to be recognized at once and without difficulty as being for hire.
1662
Contingency begins for us [...] at the moment when the possibility of deducing fails us, and makes us feel the need to sense new perceptions.
1805
Statuette of a girl
ca. 550–500 BCE
Any company that does not elevate, debases; and the more intimate and familiar it is, the more it has this result.
1869
The will is a blind power, which can only direct itself toward things that the understanding represents to it.
1674-1675
The world is an organized and living being, an animal, [...] and full of a great Soul in which all particular souls are contained.
c. 253-270 AD
It is known that these condemnations were usually carried out in effigy and that worthless old papers were burned instead of the book itself.
1746
Head of Saint John the Baptist
1636
[...] praise the goodness of kings [...] and the submission of their subjects.
c. 1552-1553
[This book] was not composed by St. John, but by one Cerinthus, who had used a great name to give more weight to his reveries.
1764
God as a being of reason.
1841
[...] all the people there are so poor that no one studies or reasons, except to make a living.
1643-1649
Chalcedony amulet, thunderbolt
664–334 BCE
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
1746
[...] if we consider the objects of the senses [...] as mere phenomena, we thereby acknowledge that a thing in itself underlies them, although we do not know what it is [...].
1783
The people [...] always have the right to shake off the yoke, and to free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny that the sword and violence have introduced [...].
1690
The world above the heavens, no poet will ever sing of it worthily... For that which is without color, without form, [...] reality as it truly is, can only be contemplated by the spirit.
1953
Marble portrait, probably of Matidia, niece of the emperor Trajan and mother of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian
117–138 CE
Happier than the Italians, because we came later, our language was perfected in more favorable circumstances.
1768
This [...] is the shooting of a shooter, of a man who wants to shoot, of a man who knows he is shooting (art, not nature).
4th century BC
One awaits the happy ending without any anxiety. It is expected, and besides, the journey is so charming that one gladly lingers.
1926
It is not impossible, metaphysically speaking, that there could be a dream as continuous and lasting as a man's life; but this is a thing as contrary to reason as the fiction of a book being formed by chance [...].
1704
Bronze hydria (water jar)
early 4th century BCE
[A man] was always ready, out of spite, to undo the good he had just accomplished.
100-120 AD
The relation habitus is not founded immediately in the substance [...] [but] by means of some quality, such as hardness, softness.
c. 1270
To judge is nothing other than to distinguish or to discern; imagination and judgment are commonly included under the name of mind [...].
1772
It is more in keeping with humanity to laugh at the things of life than to groan over them.
49 to 62 A.D.
The Missionary's Adventures
ca. 1883
In science, the human mind obeys the action of sensation [...]; whereas, in faith, it obeys the action of the soul, which is the nobler agent.
1623
It is distressing to be deceived; more distressing to be deceived by one of your own.
81 BC
When we have discovered the true meaning [of Scripture], we must necessarily resort to judgment and reason to give our assent to it.
1670
Why democratic peoples naturally desire peace, and democratic armies naturally desire war.
1835-1840
Marble fragment of a stele (grave marker) of a youth
mid-4th century BCE
The artist clearly understood the mission that was addressed only to him, to restore to myth its virile nature and to deliver music, to force it to speak.
1876
Who has not had acquaintances, friends, or relatives who have voluntarily left this world? And should we think of these people with horror, as if they were criminals?
1851
Generally one finds a tendency for the amount of currency to decrease in the face of an enormous increase in value, not only in commodities but in monetary transactions in general.
1865
Taking the term in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed, and never will. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed.
1762
Bronze statuette of a comic actor
ca. 1st–2nd century CE