Perhaps [...] it is out of benevolence that God grants me [...] the ability to end my life not only at the most suitable time, but also in the least painful way.
4th century BC
I discover at the same time that this body has extension, and that my movement consists in traversing it; these two ideas are [...] absolutely correlative, and cannot exist one without the other.
1817
As much as accusations are useful in a republic, so are slanders dangerous.
1855
A duty can be contained and moderated by another duty, but not by purely economic necessities.
1893
The Afternoon Meal (La Merienda)
ca. 1772
We are therefore born unjust. For each one tends towards himself. This is against all order. One must tend towards the general.
1670
We only enjoy other people; the rest is nothing.
1746
When art [...] does [...] violence to nature [...], rarely are the efforts it makes to vanquish it [...] crowned with success, and it almost never achieves its principal goal.
1620
Adversity tears the soul, but happiness corrupts it.
1754
Saints Michael and Francis
ca. 1505–9
To think often, and not to retain for a single moment the memory of what one thinks, is to think in a very useless manner.
1689
If I want something and it does not happen, I am unhappy.
c. 108 AD
Although a happy quickness of mind is a gift of nature, art can nevertheless help and perfect it.
1636
The "apparent world" is the only real one: the "true world" is merely added by a lie...
1888
Pin
50 CE - 400 CE
To act to please the world, [...] to study to be admired, to teach to get rich, to dress up in a disguise of goodness and equity [...] these are things I will never bring myself to do.
4th century BC
The word makes man free; as long as he cannot speak, he is a slave: an outrageous passion, an excessive joy, an extreme sorrow, are equally mute.
1841
The language of action, then so natural, was a great obstacle to overcome. Could one abandon it for another whose advantages were not yet foreseen, and whose difficulty was so keenly felt?
1746
The independence we experience [...] is not incompatible with a dependence of another nature.
1643-1649
Terracotta statuette of a woman
early 3rd century BCE
[The metaphysician] must penetrate the interior of things; and the true essence, the profound reality of a movement [...] can never be better revealed to him than when he performs the movement himself.
1922
Nature does nothing in vain.
c. 350 BC
The most generous patriot and the most sordid miser, the most magnanimous hero and the most cowardly man, in all their actions, equally have in view their own interest and personal happiness.
1751
[...] how can it be that Christians continue to sin, as if they had not been redeemed [...]? From which we see that [this mystery] is impenetrable to reason, its effectiveness disproven by experience.
1766
María Teresa, Infanta of Spain
mid-17th century
Men are indifferent regarding the stability of the earth [...] but they are not at all indifferent to these opinions when they are upheld by those they hate.
1674-1675
They were made to recite prayers to judge if they were heretics; and when they recited these prayers poorly, [...] they were executed.
1769
If, because of the body, we are surrounded by evils, God has nevertheless given us virtue, which has no master.
c. 253-270 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
Needle
3900 BCE - 100 CE
What is the peculiar character of the modern world? [...] It is that man is no longer born to the place he will occupy in life [...], but is free to use his faculties [...] to create for himself the fate that seems most desirable to him.
1869
Fear sometimes gives us wings on our heels, [...] other times it nails us to the ground and immobilizes us.
1580
To be continually ready to admit that another is something other than what one reads in them [...], perhaps something else entirely.
1947
He would remain in quiet meditation on what he had just read [...]. The tower rested on his eye, like distant music on the ear, obscurely, half-consciously.
1827
Marble relief with Herakles carrying the Erymanthian Boar
27 BCE–68 CE
Each time, the destiny of one suits the destiny of the other, and each is, at the same time as the hero of his own drama, an extra in the drama of another.
1836
If, when these various jobs were created, women had been called to them, we would be accustomed to it [...] and it would seem no more singular to us to see them sitting in Parliament than behind a counter.
1926
I was made to suffer this disgrace only because I had defended the State, and I underwent it voluntarily so as not to see the fatherland I had saved perish with me.
September 57 BC
The idea of harmfulness stops laughter.
1740s
Head of marble colossal female statue
17th century?
What is important to combat, therefore, is not so much anarchy or despotism as the apathy which can create either almost indifferently.
1835-1840
As soon as a party has pushed the revolution far enough that it can no longer follow it, [...] it is set aside by its more audacious allies [...]. The revolution thus follows an ascending line.
1851/1852
Why torture oneself over a problem that it is more stimulating to disdain than to solve?
63-64 AD
In alteration [...], an intrinsic form is acquired. [...] But in local motion, what is acquired is 'where' (ubi), which names extrinsically.
c. 1270
Statue of a man
6th century BCE or later
Those who do not know how to separate philosophy from theology argue whether Scripture should be subject to reason or reason to Scripture.
1670
Any man who concentrates on study [...] lives isolated in the midst of the world. He is always himself, and almost never others; he must therefore almost always appear ridiculous to them.
1758
One must not be a quietist nor wait ridiculously with folded arms for what God will do, [...] but one must act according to the presumptive will of God, [...] striving with all our power to contribute to the general good.
1686
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
Cymbal
7000 BCE - 330 CE