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
As for me, although old age is gaining on me, I will not blush to reconcile myself with my dear Cicero, whom I had abandoned for too long.
45 BC
The surest way to deceive men and to perpetuate their prejudices is to deceive them in childhood.
1766
One can easily account for everything when one allows oneself to imagine agents and laws of action at will.
1766
Sunset after a Storm on the Coast of Sicily
1853
In those points where I have grasped the truth, I have some hope that if, on a first reading, some doubt arises [...], on a second reading, the answer will present itself.
1623
It is therefore to inconsistency that posterity will owe its existence.
1758
No discovery was ever made on its own; at the source of all manifestations of our activity, there is a genius who meditates, and whose meditations were often painful.
1926
Modern industry increasingly replaces complex labor with simpler labor for which no instruction is necessary.
1849
Limestone male figure in Egyptian dress
mid-6th century BCE
The habit of inattention must be considered the greatest vice of the democratic mind.
1835-1840
There are not three rainbows, and even less so more, because the second is already very faint; so that the third refraction would be excessively weak [...].
c. 334 BC
Freedom, restored to commerce [...], was a benefit that could not be enjoyed as soon as it was granted. A word from the monarch had been able to annihilate this freedom; a word did not bring it back.
1776
Habit is a powerful means of correcting ourselves, by filling us with good dispositions and virtuous inclinations.
1742
Terracotta statuette of an actor
late 5th–early 4th century BCE
By living without committing the slightest injustice, which is, in my eyes, the most beautiful way to prepare a defense.
4th century BC
Wherever there are men sensitive to passions, and where imagination is the master of reason, there is strangeness, and an incomprehensible strangeness.
1674-1675
There is, however, one thing that prevents this calculation from being exact, namely the weight of the pulley and the difficulty one may have in making the rope slide [...].
1637
People are naturally inconsistent [...] things must therefore be arranged so that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.
1513
Rock crystal bead with striations
ca. 2200–1450 BCE
Man is visibly made for thinking; that is all his dignity and all his merit.
1670
[...] he desired, as much as anyone, the return to the old order of things. But the conspirators did not dare to trust a timid character like his, a man already of that age which robs even the most vigorous souls of audacity and firmness.
100-120 AD
I am so bad a flatterer, that I am never more at ease than when I can freely give my opinion on the things that pass before our eyes.
1574
As a general rule, love marriages have an unhappy outcome, for they provide for the future generation at the expense of the present one.
1819
Portrait of a Woman with Tapestry Work
1800
Even misfortune has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune elevates a courageous spirit, and makes it gather all its forces which it was not using.
1746
The ostensive syllogism draws a true conclusion from two true premises; whereas the syllogism ad impossibile [...] from a false premise draws an obviously false conclusion.
c. 1270
It is not death and pain that we should fear, but the very fear of pain and death.
c. 108 AD
Man cannot bear for more than a moment to be alone in wanting good. He needs an all-powerful ally.
1934
Ear probe
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Should an evident quality be called occult, because its immediate cause is perhaps occult, or has not yet been discovered?
1715-1716
This power [to punish] is not absolute and arbitrary [...], it is to inflict on him the penalties that calm reason and pure conscience naturally dictate and ordain, penalties proportionate to his fault.
1690
Does homicide, indeed, make the gods propitious?
1773
A solid and sure judgment, and a spirit all of fire, are [...] qualities that attract the name of prodigy to the man in whom they are united.
1636
Marble statue of Aphrodite
1st or 2nd century CE
The things that the celestial gods produce do not result from a free choice, but from a natural necessity, because they act, as parts of the universe, upon the other parts of the universe.
c. 253-270 AD
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting.
1762
The ultimate end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear, [...] but on the contrary to permit each one, as far as possible, to live in security.
1670
The Sage takes for himself only what is strictly necessary and leaves the rest to others. He does not stir, he does not struggle. All agitation, all competition, is a sign of morbid passion.
4th century BC
Marble head of a youth
4th century BCE
One is nowhere as well hidden as in a crowd.
1893
Thus one passes, by imperceptible degrees, from the necessity lived by the body to the necessity thought by the mind.
1900
[Artistic thought is] an organic growth [...] in which what is new does not destroy what is old, but only expands it.
1896
We can grasp virtue in such a way that it becomes vicious, if we embrace it with a desire too harsh and violent.
1580
Marble relief with Herakles carrying the Erymanthian Boar
27 BCE–68 CE
Power and hatred are two things [...] put together on earth.
62-65 AD
To feel is our entire existence, and to judge is but to discern a circumstance in a prior perception, that is, to feel distinctly a part of what was at first felt confusedly.
1805
Nietzsche calls his volume 'the gift of this single month'.
1882
The question, 'Need I obey my conscience?' is as present to those who never heard of the principle of utility, as to utilitarians.
1861
The Serenade
ca. 1678–80