If quickness of mind alone should not command in chief, it can at least command in second.
1636
[Sacred jurisprudence] is sometimes contrary to reason, to civil law, to the rights of Sovereigns, and even to natural law, but all these rights are made to yield to divine rights.
1768
If we were to spend the time we put into controlling others [...] into sounding our own depths, we would easily feel how our entire fabric is built of weak and failing pieces.
1580
Above all these gods reigns the God par excellence, the absolute Good, principle of all that is divine, source of the divinity of the other gods.
c. 253-270 AD
Christ Shown to the People
1510–15
Every community is one body that is in the state of nature in relation to all other states.
1690
This is the beginning of the first Olympian ode by Pindar.
c. 1552-1553
The consideration of his fall teaches us how much man must be wary of his own strength.
1263-1264
Pacifism is only likely to do harm through the confusion between two repugnances: the repugnance to kill and the repugnance to die. The first is honorable, but very weak; the second, almost shameful, but very strong.
1943
Statuette of a youth with duck
900 BCE - 100 BCE
What makes the tragedy of my current destiny is that my boldest undertakings must serve to make me a living.
1896
The markets make the law for the government.
1776
Most write only poor and popular accounts, which are the disgrace of history.
1623
The happiness of man is not God's end, I mean his principal end, his ultimate end. God is his own end.
1707
Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte"
1884
Every idea, as an idea, involves affirmation or negation.
1661-1675
Good men find in the conscience of their beautiful deeds the most perfect reward for their virtue, yet this divine virtue aspires to more lasting honors [...].
54-51 BC
The men who tremble most before the laws are the most intrepid against the enemy; and those who most dread suffering are those who least fear blame.
100-120 AD
The number [of philosophers] increases through persecution itself. They have only to be wise, and above all to be united, and you can be sure they will triumph.
1758
Christ with a Staff
1650
Wise is the one who considers yes and no from the center of the circumference, and lets the wheel turn. [...] Wise is the one who acts when circumstances are favorable and ceases to act when the time is right.
4th century BC
When [the artist] looks at a thing, he sees it for its own sake, and not for his. He no longer perceives simply in order to act; he perceives for the sake of perceiving — for nothing, for pleasure.
1911
To cure the ills of the people, a few words suffice; the sword must be used to root out those of princes.
1855
[...] apart from past pleasures, which are now my only enjoyments, there is not an empty corner left for what is no more.
1782-1789
Bronze bull
late 5th–early 4th century BCE
The city is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
c. 375 BC
The more general and indeterminate the rules of conduct and thought, the more individual reflection must intervene to apply them to particular cases.
1893
Is it not the greatest perfection they [organized bodies] can have, to be such admirable machines that only an all-powerful God could have made them?
1686
...a form of punctuation [...] that is too contrary to our modern habits.
1643-1662
A Patrician Couple
1730
It is the irony of life that the most energetic feelings of gratitude and devotion [...] develop in us towards those who, having the power to annihilate our existence [...], are pleased to abstain from it.
1869
[...] from the duchess to the commoner, there was not a woman who did not have her own, either for show or for a reason.
1748
Child prodigies generally become superficial minds later on; whereas genius often presents, in childhood, a certain slowness of conception, [...] because it thinks deeply.
1819
Obscurity is the kingdom of error.
1747
Terracotta statuette base
3rd century BCE
Food does not benefit [...] if it is rejected as soon as it is taken.
63-64 AD
[The insurrection] did not aim to change the form of government, but to alter the order of society. It was not [...] a political struggle [...] but a class struggle, a kind of servile war.
1893
To hold in honor something that does not succeed, precisely because it has not succeeded—that would be much more in keeping with my morality.
1888
Certainly the memory of a pain is very different from the pain itself.
1805
Limestone lower left leg
4th or 3rd century BCE ?
In the one, they swear to prefer no one to Caesar; in this one, we swear to prefer ourselves to everyone.
c. 108 AD
[...] in practice, nations do not behave among themselves as honest individuals behave among themselves.
1926
There is [...] by the fact of nature and for the purpose of the conservation of species, a being that commands, and a being that obeys.
c. 350 BCE
It is only by listening to the philosopher that the theologian can be armed in advance against all the difficulties that the former could create for him.
1793
Buckle
7000 BCE - 330 CE
This respect [for antiquity], which hindered the progress of the mind for so many centuries, was pushed [...] to the most servile credulity.
1769
The weakest of all souls are those whose will [...] allows itself to be continually carried away by the present passions, which [...] put the soul in the most deplorable state it can be.
1649
What constitutes dialectical movement is the coexistence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category.
1847
To be happy, desire must be neither too strong nor too weak.
1742
Head of a Child
1768