Human life [...] goes from suffering to boredom.
1819
Collective curiosity is all the more lively as personal relationships between individuals are more continuous and frequent.
1893
Since two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same time in the same place, whatever exists anywhere excludes every other thing of the same kind.
1689
Right must not be adjusted to politics, but politics must indeed be adjusted to right.
1797
Two Women Embracing
1913
The mind thinks and arranges at little cost what costs the heart infinitely to implement.
1636
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
[The one] [...] who has never ceased his whole life to do useful and honest deeds, is truly the victor.
4th century BC
The only good that is not subject to chance is that which is outside the world.
1947
Marble grave stele of Demetrios
1st century BCE
What folly it is, then, to allow ourselves to be deprived of the most secure of possessions [the past]?
63-64 AD
Perhaps one should abide by the author's judgment, and not needlessly increase the mass of documents [...] that he himself deemed negligible.
1896
He would have felt no pain [...] if peace had been born in his house, and if he had been able to quietly await the moment of his ruin.
1518-1527
From peace emanate the speculations of the great Sages and the actions of the great kings; non-intervention brings fame; abstraction raises one above all.
4th century BC
The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1540
Society is made more for the happiness of the wicked man than for that of man in general.
1770
All things have sympathy for one another through their irrational life.
c. 253-270 AD
Do you not know that virtue is a state of war, and that to live in it, one must always fight some battle against oneself?
1761
We pay attention to the objects we distinguish and prefer over others.
1704
Leda and the Swan, after Boucher
1800
Yes, [he said], when they want to be greater than me; but those who work to increase my power, it is also just to let them share in it.
100-120 AD
Two empires are in relation to one another as two individuals in the state of nature.
1677
There have never been free societies without morals, and [...] it is woman who creates the morals.
1835-1840
He who in time of revolution commands a decisive position and surrenders it, instead of forcing the enemy to storm it, deserves, without exception, to be treated as a traitor.
1851-1852
Madonna and Child
mid-15th century
It is not need, it is not desire—no, it is the love of power that is the demon of men. Give them everything [...] they will remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits, it wants to be satisfied.
1881
Its [moral] binding force consists in the existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to violate our standard of right, and which [...] manifests itself [...] in the form of remorse.
1861
It is better to derogate from one's station than from one's genius.
1746
The practical intellect is compared to artificial things, as the measure to the thing measured; conversely, the speculative intellect is compared to the things it conceives as the thing measured to the measure.
c. 1270
Statuette of a girl, fragmentary
3rd century BCE
Religion is the art of intoxicating men with enthusiasm, to prevent them from dealing with the evils with which their rulers overwhelm them here below.
1766
Nothing allows us to say whether [one] was made based on [the other], or vice versa.
1643-1662
The light by which we see in this world comes from the soul of the observer.
1870
Of equal size, the most striking building is the one whose whole my eye easily grasps.
1772
Fragment of a limestone funerary stele with a disk and a crescent
2nd half of the 6th century BCE
Without money [...], one neither takes nor defends cities.
1733
This body is not yours; it is but skillfully arranged clay.
c. 108 AD
It is certain that nothing is rarer among human writings than a history that is well-made and accomplished in all its points.
1623
I resolved to seek no other knowledge than that which could be found in myself, or else in the great book of the world.
1637
The Crucifixion, (reverse) Saint Francis of Assisi; The Resurrection, (reverse) An Abbot Saint, Possibly Saint Benedict
1455
No dissension is so great or so dangerous as that which comes from religion: it separates citizens, neighbors, friends, relatives [...], it breaks alliances [...] and penetrates to the depths of hearts to [...] entrench irreconcilable hatreds.
c. 1552-1553
When disorder has reached a certain point, a revolution, however wise it may be, is never completed without causing violent shocks.
1776
It would be strange if two good things were to become one bad thing.
329-323 BC
Abundance of speech [...] are no small advantages [...] when they are governed by sound judgment, a wise and moderate mind.
86-82 BC
A Man with the Initials FM
1751
All of modern philosophy derives from Descartes.
1915
The best way to defend the truth [...] is not to argue, for in the end it is better [...] to leave [false scholars] in their errors than to attract their aversion.
1674-1675
There are no customs, however innocent and reasonable they may be, that cannot be made odious or ridiculous, when judged by a model unknown to their authors.
1751
Ignorance that knows itself, that judges itself, and that condemns itself, is not a complete ignorance: to be so, it must be ignorant of itself.
1580
Knife
670 BCE - 330 CE