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
They farmed enough to eat and spun enough to clothe themselves. No one harmed another. That was the age when everything followed its natural course, in perfection.
4th century BC
However, who can be sure of what goes on in the hearts of kings, and of what determines their will?
1746
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: to find that limit [...] is as indispensable [...] as protection against political despotism.
1859
Terracotta male head
5th century BCE
The knowledge of all the opinions [...] of other men [...] is not so much a science as a history.
1674-1675
The easier and faster a movement is, the less it is felt, so that it often ends up [...] being completely unnoticed.
1801
As for poetry, it is but a kind of learned dream.
1623
Today the victory was in the hands of the enemies, if they had had a leader who knew how to win.
100-120 AD
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1560
Their nature is much easier to conceive when we see them gradually come into being in this way, than when we consider them only as already made.
1637
Man, [...] in the social order as in the natural order, acts according to the laws of his nature and seeks his own interest.
1677
In short: the business of the senses is to perceive; that of the understanding, to think. Now, to think is to unite representations in a single consciousness.
1783
I adhere totally to the mysteries of the Christian faith [...]; this adherence is love, not affirmation.
1957
The Seine: Morning
1874
[...] your biblical faith is sincere [...] only when it accepts as the divine word everything, absolutely everything, that one reads in the Holy Scripture; but as soon as you establish distinctions [...] you are splitting hairs, you are nothing but hypocrites who pretend to be believers.
1841
If I advance in age, I know I will necessarily have to pay my tribute to old age; my sight will weaken, my hearing will diminish, my intellect will decline...
4th century BC
What is this glory that swells your hearts [...]? An echo, a shadow, a dream, the shadow of a dream.
1742
[The substances agree] just as if there were a mutual influence, or as if God always had a hand in it beyond His general concurrence.
1696
Limestone relief of a youth, from a funerary building
ca. 300 BCE
There exists only the social man, man embedded in society like a tree in a forest. [Some] imagine they can destroy the forest without touching the trees.
1926
It is hoped that this work [...] will merit above all the approval of the Clergy, who will find all their rights established therein on an unshakeable basis.
1768
The art [...] that no one can mark the limits of your capacity will remain [...] fruitless if you do not add to it the art of hiding the affections of your heart.
1636
We will command attention by promising to speak of important, new, extraordinary things, or of facts that concern the State or the audience itself.
86-82 BC
Marble female figure
4500–4000 BCE
To succeed [...], one must renew one's brilliant deeds.
1513-1519
...saving, in other things, our right and that of others in all matters.
1662
It is impossible to establish anything precise when one wants to set limits on the freedom of trade. Where, indeed, would one place these limits?
1776
He who, without stopping at appearances, judges the happiness of men only by the state of their hearts, will see their miseries even in their successes.
1762
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen
1896
Mrs. Diderot is one of the few women who do not know how to suffer.
1759-1774
[The illusion that] thought, following the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abysses of Being, and that it has the power not only to know but even to correct existence.
1872
Christianity carries within it this truth, that suffering (the cross) is the true purpose of life. That is why it rejects suicide, as being opposed to this purpose.
1851
These swallows that go [...] are the messengers of spring.
1546/1563
The Love Song
1868–77
But the practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is critique that measures singular existence against essence, particular actuality against the idea.
1841
[Individual duties] are individual only in appearance and can also only depend on social conditions.
1893
In the succession of time, one event takes place after another without them sharing a common end.
c. 335 BC
To attribute the existence and constitution of the universe to chance and fortune is to commit an absurdity and to speak as a man devoid of sense and intelligence.
c. 253-270 AD
Marble inscribed base
ca. 2nd century CE
Submitting to the laws of a country [...] does not make a man a member of the society established there: it is but a local protection and a local homage [...].
1690
To hate one's soul is to resist its guilty desires. [...] When our soul suggests thoughts contrary to the law of God, we must reject it with horror.
1263-1264
One must choose, in philosophy, between pure reasoning which aims for a definitive result [...] and patient observation which only gives approximate results, capable of being corrected and completed indefinitely.
1919
The introduction and perfection of arts and sciences in an empire do not cause its decline. But the very same causes that accelerate the progress of sciences sometimes produce the most fatal effects.
1772
Roses in a Bowl
1883
An acrostic explained everything in venerable antiquity.
1764
[...] one meets one's destiny by trying to avoid it.
1st century AD
In America, all citizens who are electors have the right to be jurors.
1835-1840
[Some] flee the struggle, avoid looking death in the face, like children who are distracted when one wants to give them a lancet prick.
1580
Interior of a Gothic Church at Night
probably ca. 1635–40