In vain do wealth and poverty [...] place great distances between two men; public opinion [...] brings them closer to the common level.
1835-1840
To find a way to make amusing things more amusing and unpleasant things less unpleasant.
16th century
Which of his readers does he not send away with a calmer heart! Can one, overwhelmed with sadness, pick up one of his books and not feel cheerfulness reborn?
45 BC
Little by little, the people grow accustomed to irreverence towards the magistrate, [...] learn to disobey willingly, and let themselves be led by the bait of liberty, or rather license, which is the sweetest and most tantalizing poison in the world.
c. 1552-1553
Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Barbara (1768–1829), Marchioness of Donegall
ca. 1790
Which is not to waste time, but to use it well.
1643-1649
[Ignorance] is the opposite of science, & the first disposition to faith. One feels its full importance for the Church.
1768
All our intuitions are nothing but representations of phenomena; [...] the things we perceive are not in themselves as we perceive them.
1781
What is remarkable [...] is their industry combined with frivolity, their love of novelty [...], their contentious and quarrelsome spirit with little courage.
1764
Limestone ram-bearer
second quarter of 6th century BCE
It is not [...] solely by quantity that we judge the abundance or scarcity of a thing: it is by the quantity considered in relation to the uses we make of it.
1776
To follow him down that path [of diversion] would have been to be stripped of a victory already won.
1830-1831
[...] reason of State did not permit them to observe the oath [...].
1968
There is good and evil only in those things which emanate from our free will, and [...] outside of our judgments and our wills, everything is indifferent.
c. 108 AD
Richard Abell
1724
Almost everyone receives their ideas ready-made and follows public opinion their whole life. [...] Servile imitators, who say yes or no according to how they've been prompted, and then believe they have decided for themselves.
4th century BC
How many revolutions executed or prevented, wars ignited or extinguished, by the intrigues of a priest, a woman, or a minister!
1772
The natural sentiments, excited by the general appearances of things, are not easily destroyed by refined reflections on their common and imperceptible origin.
1751
Everything that exists necessarily has a positive cause through which it exists.
1661-1676
Limestone hand holding a pyxis and a branch of leaves
3rd–1st century BCE
It is sometimes more difficult to govern a single man than a great people.
1746
Equality is the basis of liberty, as poverty is the source of servitude.
100-120 AD
There is an original imperfection in the creature [...], because the creature is essentially limited, hence it cannot know everything and can be mistaken.
c. 253-270 AD
What kind of truth is it that is bounded by these mountains, and is a lie to the world beyond?
1580
Still Life of Grapes and Peaches
ca. 1617
Its members sanctioned, or rather restored, the obnoxious privileges of feudalism, thereby betraying the liberty and the interests of the peasantry.
1851-1852
I am bruised by my happiness: may all who suffer be my physicians!
1883-1885
Ambition and the desire to distinguish oneself have led [some] to dogmatize about nature as if it were a sufficiently explored subject.
1620
No one loves their country because it is great, but because it is their own.
63-64 AD
Limestone statuette of a boy holding a bird
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
The contradiction of faith and love.
1841
The Father and the Son have the same power and the same will.
1263-1264
Utility is the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.
1859
[...] 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 statuette of a goddess
ca. 3rd–1st century BCE
A fact cannot be changed in the blink of an eye, even when it is desirable.
1893
Some are born virtuous, it is true; but care, reflection, and effort can give to others what nature has denied them.
1636
Wealth should not give rise to pride, nor to idleness; it should only be an instrument in the service of virtue.
c. 387 BC
Error is the cause of men's misery; it is the evil principle that has produced evil in the world.
1674-1675
Portrait of a Woman
1657
A moment comes when memory [...] is so well embedded in present perception that one cannot say where perception ends and where memory begins.
1896
One begins with the senses to lead people little by little to what is above the senses. However, all this difficulty in attaining abstract knowledge does nothing against innate knowledge.
1704
There is nothing contingent: there can be nothing contingent in this world. All that is, is necessarily by virtue of some cause that produces it.
1805
[...] this failure was attributed to the death of Pascal, a famous mathematician [...], for as they say, he was its inventor, as well as its conductor [...].
1662
Limestone statuette of a female votary
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Everyone obeys the consideration of utility; and there is utility in that which serves to save the State.
329-323 BC
One would want not a book of piety, but a book of tales that would take its place in the first rank among collections of popular tales.
1926
if each [Church and State] kept within its own proper bounds, there would not be the least occasion for trouble and discord...
1686
One must reread [a text], chastise it severely, add in all good faith what one can argue in one's favor, [and] what can be objected to.
1741-1784
Bronze batillum (incense shovel)
late 1st–early 2nd century CE