To love one's enemies is therefore an impossible precept. One can abstain from doing harm to one who harms us; but love is a movement of the heart, which is stirred in us only at the sight of an object we judge to be favorable to us.
1766
Usually, it is those kinds of people who are destiny's favorites.
1747
Glory follows merit as infallibly as the shadow follows the body, although, like the shadow, it sometimes walks in front, sometimes behind.
1851
The testimony [...] may be unique, it may be anonymous; it exists, with its certificates of origin and authenticity.
1643-1662
Saint Vincent, Patron Saint of Lisbon
1525
Even when a criminal act is certainly harmful to society, the degree of harmfulness [...] is not regularly proportional to the intensity of the punishment it receives.
1893
The most dangerous of philosophers is the one who shows the monarch the immense sums that [certain groups] cost his States.
1774
I believe that the time spent on refutation in philosophy is generally time wasted. [...] What counts and what endures is the positive truth one has contributed.
1919
The river Lethe is this union with the body that makes the soul forget its true nature.
c. 253-270 AD
Horse and Buggy
1909
Thus, as some lack what is abundant in others, they all contribute to their common advantage.
1776
An image remains essentially an image everywhere, whether sculpted and painted, or simply imaginative [...] and in adoring the god it represents, one cannot help but adore it at the same time.
1841
The fullness of truth is reserved for us in the next life, and in this one the Holy Spirit teaches the faithful [...] while exciting in their hearts an ever keener desire for these same truths.
1263-1264
One shall spend the greater part of one's time in adornment and grooming, under penalty [...] of not being looked at by any member of the society.
16th century
Virgin and Child
ca. 1485
What does your conscience say? — 'You must become who you are.'
1882
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
c. 375 BC
Instead of that speculative philosophy [...], one can find a practical one, by which [...] we might [...] make ourselves, as it were, the masters and possessors of nature.
1637
Lascivious animals and those with a lot of semen age early: semen is a residue, and the emission of semen dries out the animal.
c. 350 BC
Portrait of a Man
1790
There would not be so many false inventions and so many imaginary discoveries, if men did not let themselves be dazed by ardent desires to appear as inventors.
1674-1675
It would be better to discourse upon the true foundations of truth.
1580
One of the greatest problems of education is to reconcile, under a legitimate constraint, submission with the ability to use one's freedom.
1797-1798
Where, in fact, in practice do you hold virtue to be equal and even superior to everything else! Show me a Stoic, if you have one.
c. 108 AD
Terracotta statuette of an actor
late 5th–early 4th century BCE
How many are there [...] who respect authority [...] when they see another, easier path to achieve honors and all the objects of their ambition?
59 BC
Let us contemplate the end of our being without sorrow.
63-64 AD
Oppression has long impoverished them, and they are easier to oppress as they become poorer. It is a vicious circle from which they cannot escape.
1835-1840
Patience is the art of hoping.
1747
Limestone horse with a rider
middle or 3rd quarter of the 6th century BCE
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
A philosopher becomes attached to a favorite principle [...] at once he wants to subject the entire universe to it, & reduce all phenomena to it; which throws him into forced reasonings, & into countless absurdities.
1742
Formerly, the phrase went beyond the content; here, the content goes beyond the phrase.
1851/1852
One is affected differently in judging than in desiring; it is another act of our sensibility.
1817
The Crucified Christ between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist
ca. 1406
The more he knows, the more he feels he has more knowledge to acquire, and the more knowledge he has acquired, the more facility he has to do good.
1750
[The Trojan War] was the original sin of the Greeks, their remorse. Through this remorse the executioners deserved to inherit in part the inspiration of their victims.
1942
To carry one's mind back into the past, and to make it, so to speak, ancient.
1623
Love breathes [...] a dormant and covered fire that winter had concealed within our veins.
1546/1563
Porphyry support for a water basin
2nd century CE
Making one's fortune is not synonymous with making one's happiness.
18th century
The idea of perfection sterilized French poetry for a century and a half [...].
1926
Philosophers were not wrong [...] to define love as an undertaking of the gods for the safety and preservation of the young.
100-120 AD
It is so, because it is so; it is not so, because it is not so.
4th century BC
Bronze pendant in the form of a paired couple
8th century BCE
The true understanding cannot perish [...]. As it does not come from external causes, but from God, it cannot [...] undergo any alteration from without.
c. 1660
Prosperity [...] is but a fleeting state: it is a kind of game [...] where the most skillful is the one who knows when to quit while they're ahead.
1636
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
1859
It is a strange thing to see that many people respond not to what is said to them, but to what they imagine.
1686
Bes
1st century BCE–1st century CE