Truth, for fools, is a torch that shines in the fog without dispelling it.
18th century
One must suffer the enlightened and impartial criticisms made of the most estimable men or works [...].
1746
No one takes note of their errors, as they are infinite in number [...], it is easy to promote those of their prognostications [...] which happen to come true by chance.
1580
There are no sharp angles in nature; a continuous motion can only change direction by passing through all possible degrees of change.
1738
Horse and rider
ca. 750–600 BCE
However different the acts so qualified may seem at first glance, it is impossible that they do not have some common ground. For they affect the moral conscience of nations everywhere in the same way.
1893
This is how one appraises and weighs things, when one has established rules of judgment.
c. 108 AD
When thinking only of ourselves, we cannot help but consider our free will to be independent.
1643-1649
Error is the cause of men's misery; it is the evil principle that has produced evil in the world.
1674-1675
Limestone statuette of a male votary with Cypriot shorts and a diadem
first half of the 6th century BCE
The ambition of one man is not that of another [...] but the humanity of one man is that of all others, and the same object excites this sentiment in all men.
1751
Thus death came, in a way, to the aid of life. The one and the other were in each other's presence; they seemed to have wanted to mix and confound their works.
1835-1840
You are not capable of receiving the Holy Spirit as long as you continue to know Jesus Christ only according to the flesh.
1263-1264
Little is gained by freeing oneself from one's own vices if one must then battle with those of others.
63-64 AD
A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase
1662
[...] a great circumlocution is deceptive, and the audience finds themselves in the position of the many who go to soothsayers.
329-323 BC
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
Any mixture whatsoever [...] absolutely requires measure and proportion, otherwise it is not a mixture, but a confusion.
c. 360 BC
The brain keeps consciousness fixed on the world in which we live; it is the organ of attention to life.
1919
Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer
1597
Intellectual culture, if the worker possessed it, would have no influence on his wages; [...] education generally depends on the conditions of existence.
1849
For every solution, [the ancients] addressed the root, the origin, the Principle that contains them all; and it is this high-level view that made their government superior.
4th century BC
To attribute the existence and constitution of the universe to chance and fortune is to commit an absurdity and to speak as a man devoid of sense and intelligence.
c. 253-270 AD
To truly know the nature of the people, one must be a prince; and to truly know princes, one must be one of the people.
1513
Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Catherine of Siena
about 1476–80
I see everywhere men, more cunning and more educated than the common folk, deceiving them with illusions [...] that they believe to be supernatural, because they are ignorant of the secrets of nature and the resources of art.
1766
The distinction between those who lived in the past and those who are still living is not absolute; [...] in all equally, it is the same will to live that manifests itself.
1836
I discover at the same time that this body has extension, and that my movement consists in traversing it; these two ideas are [...] absolutely correlative, and cannot exist one without the other.
1817
Base feelings (envy, resentment) are degraded energy.
1947
Pansies
1903
A simpler demonstration could be formed, without speaking of perfections, so as not to be stopped by those who deny that all perfections are compatible.
Late 17th - early 18th century
This force [...] is itself without cause, and consequently inexplicable.
1620
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 thought that by letting a work leave one's hands one was disposing of another's property [...], one would be more circumspect.
1741-1784
Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Clare
ca. 1510
Scripture obliges us to believe nothing other than what is absolutely necessary to carry out this commandment [to love one's neighbor].
1670
The gods are rich, and it is only natural that they enrich their friends.
1926
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is wounded, something better than it grows.
1883-1885
The decisive test of a heroic heart is when it is free to take revenge on an enemy at will.
1636
Bronze lion paw
7th century BCE
The spirit of science is [...] a universal spirit, [...] the nameless spirit, neither Christian nor pagan.
1842-1845
The copyist, unintelligent or inattentive, has lost [...] the author's meaning.
c. 1552-1553
The naturalist deals only with effects that he can always demonstrate through experimentation [...], whereas the superstitious person collects effects that may have no other origin than the imagination.
1790
Thinking is an art that one learns like all the others, and with even more difficulty.
1762
Louis Morau
1785
Faith cannot convince us of anything contrary to our Reason.
1689
[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
Diogenes of Babylon [...] was the master of Antipater, who was that of Panaetius. Panaetius was that of Posidonius, and the latter that of Cicero.
45 BC
If [an ancient work] seems obscure to us, we should only blame our habit of judging the works of antiquity by our own.
1746
Fragment of a limestone relief with two standing figures
4th–3rd century BCE