The insights of geometry, physics, and mechanics provided me with the design, and assured me that its use would be infallible if some craftsman could form the instrument whose model I had imagined.
1642-1645
At whatever price, one must subdue the affections of one's heart, [...] if one aspires to heroism.
1636
To consider social facts as things, that is the first rule of [the] method.
1922
In the pilgrimage of this life, man finds everywhere the opportunity to learn and subjects for meditation.
1609
Two Young Peasant Women
1891–92
I will not serve anything else, do you understand! [...] Between you and us [...] it is a matter of who will best serve the republic. Well then! my sorrow is that you serve it very badly.
1893
We love the beauty of the world because we feel behind it the presence of something analogous to the wisdom we would wish to possess to satisfy our desire for the good.
1943
Men's maxims reveal their hearts.
1746
This intellectual freedom is abolished [...] when the intermediary of motives, the understanding, is disturbed permanently or only temporarily.
1839
Terracotta head of a woman
6th century BCE
Passion is better than stoicism and hypocrisy; that being honest, even in evil, is better than losing oneself out of respect for conventional morality.
1876
Books and learning give to men, more than anything else, the sense and understanding to know themselves and to hate tyranny.
c. 1552-1553
Foreign trade, always hindered [...], will be all the less flourishing the more expensive it becomes.
1776
If I want [a truth] to affect people generally, I must, in advance, prepare their minds [...]; I must raise them to it by degrees.
1772
Christ Bearing the Cross
1489
The Iliad and the Odyssey each provide the subject for one or two tragedies.
c. 335 BC
For my part, I have no one who is closer to me than myself.
c. 108 AD
[...] when one has read Herodotus, one has read everything and nothing can surprise you anymore.
1926
To cure the ills of the people, a few words suffice; the sword must be used to root out those of princes.
1855
Pin
50 CE - 400 CE
It is not the number of men, but that of the men fit for combat that gives the advantage; the rest causes more trouble than it provides help.
1580
The mystery of the miracle.
1841
[...] philosophers themselves, in the schools, investigating whether palpitations of the heart and changes of countenance in perilous circumstances are marks of timidity, or whether they are merely the consequences of a constitutional defect or a natural coldness [...].
100-120 AD
A religion that prides itself on being supernatural must seek to denature man: [...] it forbids him to love himself; it orders him to hate pleasures and to cherish pain.
1766
Bronze kyathos (single-handled jug)
ca. 450–400 BCE
One considers oneself poor and miserably housed if the walls of our baths do not gleam with ornaments whose size equals their richness [...].
63-64 AD
There is a threefold whole: the universal, the potential, and the integral whole...
c. 1270
After eight years, I ceased to be preoccupied with life and death.
4th century BC
The will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained.
1649
Marble grave relief with two portrait busts
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
It is from the bringing together of all these impressions and the combinations we make of them [...] that the perception or individual idea of an object is formed for us.
1805
We can free ourselves from love [...] through the knowledge of something better, or through the experience that teaches us that the beloved object [...] brings us much pain.
c. 1660
The principles of morality are everywhere the same, although the consequences that men draw from them are often very different.
1751
One does not invent ideas [...] but there is a way of choosing these ideas, of associating them, of expressing them, even, which is a kind of creation.
1762
Steatite spindle whorl
ca. 2400–1900 BCE
But in revolution, as in war, it is always necessary to face the enemy, and the attack is always advantageous.
1851-1852
It is probable that the arguments against the prerogatives of one sex will attract little general attention, as long as it can be said that women do not complain.
1869
[The observant spirit] has no present phenomenon in mind, but all have affected it, and what remains is a kind of sense that others do not have.
c. 1763
The universal Propositions of which we can have certain knowledge of their truth or falsehood do not relate to existence.
1689
Landscape with Figures
1914
It is sensation when one perceives an external object, reminiscence is its repetition without the object returning; but when one knows one has had it, it is memory.
1704
The most powerful influence exerted on the human mind since Descartes [...] is unquestionably that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
1915
we have no clear idea of our soul.
1674-1675
The art of managing the rest of humanity is, especially today, the virtue of the Romans.
1723-1728
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Bénévent
1808
Light is not the quality of a subject; it is the act that emanates from a subject, but does not pass into another subject; only, if another subject is present, it will experience an affection.
c. 253-270 AD
The sanctity of this learned man dazzled me as much as the beauty of his divine style. [...] he touched my heart, and I find myself more virtuous for it.
45 BC
Nature, by the sole action of its forces left to themselves, knows how to bring forth marvelous developments even from chaos.
1755
Knowledge, whether it deals with the past, the present, or the future, is always the same.
c. 380 BC
Bronze floral element
ca. 550–500 BCE