All that can be said of domestic despotism applies to political despotism.
1869
The only possible solution, in the sense of the bourgeoisie, is the postponement of the solution. [The bourgeoisie] can save the constitutional Republic only by violating the constitution.
1850
In the Christian religion, everything seems abandoned to the imagination, whims, and arbitrary decisions of its ministers [...].
1766
I have seen a host of men disturb the country to aggrandize themselves: it is the common perversity.
1893
Charles de Saint-Radegonde, called Charles Coguin, Abbot of Anchin
ca. 1511–20
The proof of the victory one has won over one's passions is not to be gentle and moderate towards one's friends [...], but to show clemency and humanity towards those who have done us injustices.
100-120 AD
It is because [the true Li] always follows very simple Laws [...] that storms form and ravage the harvests [...]. It is the same conduct that produces such different effects.
1707
My surprised postilion thought I was mad.
1782-1789
What makes the governmental organ more or less considerable is not that peoples are more or less peaceful; but it grows as [...] societies include more different, more intimately interconnected organs.
1893
Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara
early 1480s
[My] character does not lead me to flattery [...] I have more often spoken as a free man than as a slave.
55-56 AD
Until the time of Socrates, philosophy was confined to physics: and it was he [...] who first, by taking it from the moral side, gave it entry into private homes.
45 BC
The gait of one's sentences indicates if the author is tired.
1879
The thefts, murders, and accidents that happen daily in our good city of Paris, for lack of sufficient light in the streets [...].
1662
Portrait of a Young Man
1470s
For lack of a good method for analyzing our ideas, we are often content to understand each other only approximately.
1746
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
Nothing characterizes a bad reign like flattery carried to excess [...].
1746
[He] could, in good conscience, have two wives, [...] by virtue of a dispensation from the law, which would only cost him a hundred thousand écus.
circa 1748
Relief from casket
670 BCE - 330 CE
This violence is a grace on the part of the divinities [...].
1951
Philosophy is therefore nothing other than the exact and universal understanding of experience itself, the true explanation of its meaning and content.
1819
It takes but a charlatan, a scoundrel, a false prophet who has spouted his fantasies, to make [...] a sacred place and the meeting point of neighboring nations.
1764
What are desire and joy, if not a will that consents to what pleases us? And what are fear and sadness, if not a will that turns away from what displeases us?
c. 253-270 AD
Lead figure, possibly of a skeleton
possibly 4th century BCE
Whatever diversity of herbs there may be, they are all included under the name of salad.
1580
Men are rarely either entirely good or entirely bad.
1855
Facts are the materials of science, not science itself; [...] it begins with the discovery of laws.
1882
Who then could you reasonably consider more just than a man who has adapted to his present fortune, to the point of never needing what belongs to others?
4th century BC
Limestone statuette of a bearded male votary in Greek dress
second half of the 6th century BCE
Why [...] did you not take advantage of your meeting with him to tell him plainly that life and death are one and the same thing; that there is no distinction between yes and no?
4th century BC
All the movements we make without our will contributing to them [...] depend only on the conformation of our members [...] in the same way that the movement of a watch is produced by the sole force of its spring and the shape of its wheels.
1649
Wretched man, is not what you see every day enough for you? Can you see anything more beautiful [...] than the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth, and the sea?
c. 108 AD
If they have been useful through the productions of their own genius, [certain thinkers] have been a hundred times more harmful by enervating other geniuses.
1620
Statuette of a man ?
3rd–1st century BCE
Often, without the constitution being democratic, the government, by the tendency of customs and minds, is popular; and conversely [...], although the legal constitution is rather democratic, the tendency of customs [...] is oligarchic.
c. 350 BCE
My spirits, fed by this freedom [to write], regain new strength.
1574
Passions lead us into error because they fix all our attention on one side of the object they present to us, and do not allow us to consider it from all its aspects.
1758
It is by no means a question of discovering what being is endowed with this sensibility, nor what is its nature, its beginning, its end, or its ultimate destination.
1817
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
ca. 1504
Whenever a principle demonstrated to be true seems inapplicable, it is because we are ignorant of the intermediate principle which contains the means of its application.
1797
he alone deserves this title [of heretic] who, because of such dogmas, tears the body of the Church, introduces [...] marks of distinction, and voluntarily separates himself from others.
1686
As soon as we have seen the actions of the body and what results from them, we will know the first and principal cause of all passions, and consequently the way to destroy them.
c. 1660
'Condensation is the proper work of the creative intelligence'.
1896
Portrait of a Woman
1790
There are dead men whom one must kill.
1926
A modal proposition, which would be one of the best fruits of all logic: if the necessary being is possible, it exists.
Late 17th - early 18th century
If there is a supreme intelligence [...] let us be assured that it takes pleasure in seeing us fulfill the purpose of our existence, by enjoying all the pleasures for which we were created.
1742
[Certain things] contain the place rather than being contained in the place.
c. 1270
Portrait of a Woman, Said to Be Marie de Mautesson
ca. 1830