About half of humanity is composed of involuntary Trappists. Poverty, obedience, lack of all pleasures [...], such is their lot.
1851
Montaigne is slightly mistaken...
c. 1552-1553
Whenever a great event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the Clergy, these things indicate the finger of God, who always has his good friends the Priests in mind.
1768
It matters little whether a fact from a distant time is told one way or another; it is less dangerous than a mistake in a medical prescription.
1580
Statuette of Herakles
3rd century BCE–2nd century CE
By wanting to be what one is not, one comes to believe one is something other than what one is, and that is how one goes mad.
1761
To suppose that the Soul thinks and that the Man is not aware of it, is [...] to make two persons out of a single man.
1689
It happened that some poplars in a neighboring garden grew tall enough to hide the view of this tower. At which, Kant became very troubled, [...] and finally found himself positively unable to continue his evening meditations.
1827
Truly foolish is the one who tires their mind and wears out their body to reach such an end.
4th century BC
Bronze support in the form of a ram's head and foreleg
1st century BCE–1st century CE
The happiness of man is not God's end, I mean his principal end, his ultimate end. God is his own end.
1707
It is in human nature that the wretched and the weak try to conform to the powerful and the strong.
Mid-18th century
By natural right [...] we understand nothing other than the laws of the nature of each individual, according to which we conceive that each of them is naturally determined to exist and to act in a determined manner.
1670
[...] while some seek glory, and others riches, there is a third kind of man, [...] who, regarding all else as nothing, apply themselves principally to contemplation. These are the ones who call themselves philosophers.
45 BC
Axehead
ca. 3200–2000 BCE
after God and religion, this respect [that one owes to oneself] is the most powerful brake there is to prevent us from falling into vice.
1627
It is quite certain that we never know anything but our perceptions, and that we never see anything in this world but our own ideas [...].
1805
[...] the essential character of the human will, its horror vacui: it needs a goal—and it will rather will nothingness than not will at all.
1887
I call a 'proper word' that which each people uses, a 'gloss' [...] that which is in use among other peoples.
c. 335 BC
Parochialstrasse in Berlin
1831
[...] value, based on need, increases with scarcity and decreases with abundance.
1776
By setting [the fine], it would be to admit guilt.
4th century BC
Not only is [a brilliant deed] necessary to begin to gain credit, it is indispensable to preserve and increase it.
1513-1519
A multitude of functions that were diffuse become concentrated. The care of education [...], of protecting public health, of presiding over public assistance [...] gradually enters the sphere of action of the central organ.
1893
Marble head of a young woman from a funerary statue
late 4th century BCE
Revelations on the Communist trial.
1848
It is a greater miracle [...] to have healed the diseases of the soul than to have remedied the ailments of this perishable and mortal body.
1263-1264
Every great revolution in an empire impresses the imagination, and implies [...] some great quality, or at least some brilliant vice that astonishment [...] can transform into virtue.
1772
Virtue is a title that recommends us to all men.
1759-1774
Bronze left leg and foot
1st or 2nd century CE
The more necessary vice is, the more it is vice; nothing in the world is more vicious than that which, by its nature, is incapable of being good.
1746
We have invented the distinction between justice and charity. [...] Our notion of justice exempts the one who possesses from giving.
1942
The mystical philosopher meditates on the reason for being of nature and man, but he does so in the imagination; he believes he is meditating [...] on another personal Being, different from man and nature.
1841
Most of the bourgeois and business people, not having the means to maintain servants to light their way at night, [...] suffer a very great inconvenience.
1662
The Crucified Christ between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist
ca. 1406
It is in the woods, the meadows, and the kitchen gardens that schools of decorative art should be held.
1926
I fear the medicines here all the more because everyone uses chemical extracts, whose effects are swift and dangerous.
1643-1649
Inner tranquility, the testimony of a good conscience, irreproachable morals, a pure and innocent life are things essential to our happiness.
1751
The most powerful influence exerted on the human mind since Descartes [...] is unquestionably that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
1915
Limestone cippus of Philon
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
[...] what you take to be the highest point is, in his eyes, merely a stepping stone.
63-64 AD
[...] I consider justice grounded on utility to be the most important, the most sacred part of morality.
1861
The idea of being, of the possible, of the same, are so innate that they enter into all our thoughts and reasonings, and I regard them as essential to our mind.
1704
For it is the mark of a man in love with himself, and not with the beautiful and the honest, to believe himself more perfect than others.
100-120 AD
Statuette of a warrior-10
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
All those [...] who are freed from sadness, fear, and turmoil, [...] are by the same means freed from servitude.
c. 108 AD
Here and there one finds [...] souls filled with an exalted and almost fierce spiritualism, which is rarely encountered in Europe.
1835-1840
If the universe is sympathetic to itself because it constitutes one animal, and if we are affected because we are contained within this one animal [...], why would continuity not be necessary for us to sense a distant object?
c. 253-270 AD
The mind thinks and arranges at little cost what costs the heart infinitely to implement.
1636
Fragment of a limestone votive relief
330 BCE - 4 CE