The more one is enlightened and informed about the works of God, the more one will be disposed to find them excellent and entirely satisfying to all that one could have wished for.
1686
For, as we know all too well, a cubic line of desire weighs more than a cubic inch of knowledge.
1840
The death of a few more or fewer men changes neither the color of the flowers nor that of the eyes.
1926
Although a passion, for being secret, is no less a passion, [...] it matters greatly to know how to make a mystery of it.
1636
Portrait of a Married Couple (Lorenz Kraffter and Honesta Merz?)
1512
We must accept the situation that is made for us, which subjects us to absolute obligations towards things that are relative, limited, and imperfect.
1943
There are men who judge what is unseen by what is seen; the greatness [...] of the mind [...] by the nobility, dignities, and riches [...]. One is often measured by the other.
1674-1675
If he does not have this talent, he will not know it, even if I were to write it to him a thousand times.
c. 108 AD
If the power of instruction can substitute small qualities for great ones [...] and thus change our characters for the worse; why couldn't this same instruction change our characters for the better?
1772
Terracotta head of a youth
early 3rd century BCE (?)
The rich and the poor seem to be the two most distinct parts of the State. [...] as the latter are usually in the majority and the former in the minority, they are regarded as two perfectly opposite political elements.
c. 350 BCE
Truth, in the great practical interests of life, is above all a matter of combining and reconciling extremes.
1859
Holy water [...] possesses, according to them, the most astonishing virtues; it makes sacred the places and things that were previously profane.
1766
The need that citizens have for one another places them all in a state of mutual dependence.
1776
Bronze bowl from a thymiaterion (incense burner)
late 4th century BCE
Life develops towards a goal, death is a return to a destination. Genesis follows genesis without end, without our knowing their origin or seeing their term.
4th century BC
Men leap from one ambition to another; they first seek to protect themselves from offense, and then to oppress their rivals.
1513-1519
No one wants to be pitied for their mistakes.
1747
Fortune, which delights in making the decision of the most important affairs depend on a single moment, showed on this occasion the weight and influence of time.
100-120 AD
Limestone Bes
late 6th–early 5th century BCE
There is nothing superfluous (except for the overly delicate).
1574
The invention of all these machines is founded on a single principle, which is that the same force that can lift a weight [...] of one hundred pounds to a height of two feet, can also lift one of two hundred pounds to a height of one foot [...].
1637
The more a Prince exhausts himself in giving, the more he impoverishes himself of friends.
1580
Sacred beings only are what they are because they are represented as such in the mind. Should we cease to believe in them, they would be as if they were not.
1912
Arrowhead
ca. 480–330 BCE
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
The soul was put into the body to do good, and it would not know evil if it did not do it.
c. 253-270 AD
Only the foolish are loud; wise women make no sensation.
1762
We can regard science as a kind of monster, since it excites the admiration, or rather the stupid astonishment of the ignorant who see it as a sort of prodigy.
1609
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
If one has seen clearly the symptoms of decadence, one will also understand the essence of morality—one will understand what is hidden beneath its most sacred names [...]: impoverished life, the will to perish, the great weariness. Morality is the negation of life...
1888
[...] if your sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary, you would admit to me that it would be useless [...].
1764
I feared that another, who had not employed the time, money, nor the effort, might preempt me, giving to the public things he had not seen [...].
1647
In the course of the development of large-scale industry, [working] time increasingly becomes the measure of the value of commodities, which is to say, also the measure of wages.
1849
Bronze handle of a hydria (water jar)
ca. 460–450 BCE
[...] if you practice your Christian virtues only because you want to love God and be loved by him, you are not virtuous out of love for the Good and hatred for Evil; [...] you fall into the cult of Personality: it is spiritualized egoism, but egoism nonetheless.
1841
Not only are these raindrops pure phenomena, but even their round shape and the very space in which they fall are nothing in themselves.
1781
Here and there one finds [...] souls filled with an exalted and almost fierce spiritualism, which is rarely encountered in Europe.
1835-1840
The only thing that is uncertain is whether [our] ideas truly conform to the beings of which we believe them to be images [...].
1805
Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)
4th century BCE
If the Soul does not remember its own thoughts [...] of what use is it to it to think?
1689
May he whose integrity was never in doubt not see, at sixty, his name condemned to dishonor.
81 BC
A ship that is large on a river is very small on the sea.
63-64 AD
Where is the difficulty in conceiving that the same is the case with benevolence and friendship [...], and that the primary constitution of our soul makes us desire the happiness of our fellow creatures?
1751
Marble cornice fragment
2nd century CE
Never [...] is one tempted to raise one's tone, to lower it, to get carried away [...] because the orator is never beside himself.
1741-1784
By nature naturing, we understand a being that, by itself [...], can be known clearly and distinctly, such as God is.
c. 1660
Intellectual health [...] is manifested by a taste for action, the faculty of adapting [...], firmness joined with flexibility, [...] a spirit of simplicity that triumphs over complications, and finally, a superior common sense.
1932
I feel well, which is the sweetest thought, that I have lived my whole life in piety and justice.
4th century BC
Saint Dominic Resuscitating Napoleone Orsini
1467–74