For one who has done beautiful things, it is also beautiful to hear them spoken of.
c. 387 BC
He who uses words without giving them a clear and determined meaning does nothing but deceive himself and lead others into error; and whoever does so deliberately must be regarded as an enemy of Truth and Knowledge.
1689
When the statesman despairs [...] it is then the clear eye of the artist that discerns the forms [...] of a full and complete humanity.
1896
We call contingent the effects of which we see the cause, without seeing the chain of causes of that cause.
1805
James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox
ca. 1633–35
The object in itself thus remains always unknown; but if the connection of representations [...] receives universal validity through a concept of the understanding, the object is determined by this relation, and the judgment is objective.
1783
Although a happy quickness of mind is a gift of nature, art can nevertheless help and perfect it.
1636
Little fortune is enough for the happiness of the busy man; the greatest is not enough for the happiness of an idle one.
1772
The most common men reserve the violent, morose, openly selfish side of their character for those who do not have the power to resist them.
1869
The Crucifixion
1389
[An author] owes his popularity [...] to the eternal interest attached to the names of the great men whose images he has painted.
100-120 AD
Let us only win peace and not worry that it be poor: if we have war, nothing is enough; if we have peace, nothing will be lacking.
c. 1552-1553
In extreme misery, one finds oneself rich with little. A beggar who finds a coin is more affected by it than a rich man would be by finding a purse of gold.
1776-1778
The Vienna Insurrection.
1848
Apple Blossoms
1873
Just as all men naturally desire to know the truth, so too do they all have a natural desire to avoid error and to combat it when they can.
1270
Do they not seem to have separated them from all of nature, by ravishing from them at once the sky, the sun, the water, and the earth, so that the monster [...] should no longer enjoy any of the elements which are regarded as the principle of all that exists?
79 BC
The essence of its worship consists in the love of the God it adores; which is a most singular character, and which visibly distinguishes it from all other Religions.
1670
It does not depend on us to join ideas as we see fit, unless that combination is justified either by reason, which shows it to be possible, or by experience, which shows it to be actual [...].
1704
Standing male figurine
ca. 750–600 BCE
Passions always try to justify themselves, and they persuade us insensibly that we are right to follow them.
1674-1675
But there is no one here reasonable enough to understand them [...].
1643-1649
There is only one way that leads there: to renounce all things that do not depend on our free will, to detach ourselves from them, to recognize that they are foreign to us.
c. 108 AD
The doctrine of equality! But there is no more venomous poison, for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it is the end of all justice.
1888
The "Kearsarge" at Boulogne
1864
One will feel that all parts of Religion lend each other mutual aid, from which results a complete chain of truths that give each other reciprocal support.
1768
The fact that one can use words like superiority or inferiority in relation to thought shows how rotten an atmosphere we breathe.
1957
Through the disorder and the charming negligence of a brush that lets itself go, one easily recognizes the sure and skillful hand of a great painter.
1762
When [a powerful person] causes harm, it is not of small, but of great importance.
329-323 BC
Bronze serving fork
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
Many live thus, and die without having known true freedom.
1889
In ethics, it is not enough to preach integrity; it must be practiced.
1840
Almost all the revolutions that have changed the face of nations have been made to consolidate or to destroy inequality.
1835-1840
Education is an eminently social thing, in its origins as in its functions, and [...] pedagogy depends more closely on sociology than on any other science.
1922
The Departure of the Gondola
mid-1760s
Nature is full of whims, and sometimes puts an old head on young shoulders, and sometimes a young, beating heart under eighty winters.
1870
Whoever has attained wisdom in old age owes it to their years.
63-64 AD
The superior man gazes into the depths of the azure sky, into the depths of the terrestrial abysses, [...] without his vital spirits being in the least disturbed.
4th century BC
This internal conflict increases the terror, and gives a more hideous aspect to the phantoms that persecute the unfortunate victims of superstition.
1757
Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley
1882–85
God is the efficient cause of things, of their essence as well as of their existence.
1661-1676
Princes have courtiers.
1764
It is an absolute necessity for a prince to have the friendship of his people, and if he does not have it, all recourse fails him in adversity.
1513
There are acts that are weak and obscure, others hidden, others powerful that radiate far.
c. 253-270 AD
Basket of Fruit
ca. 1620
To fulfill this object, we imagined a Statue organized internally like us, and animated by a mind deprived of all kinds of ideas.
1754
The sweetest and most wholesome doctrines are those that flow from the scriptures gently expressed, and which have no tinge of controversy or commonplaces.
1623
It is not my fault if I am angry, if I have not yet established any certain course of life; it is the fault of youth.
1580
We enjoy only people; the rest is nothing.
1746
Statuette of a horseman, 3
7th–6th century BCE