It is with these small changes that pages are spoiled...
1926
The sentiment of justice [...] is the natural feeling of vengeance, applied through intelligence and sympathy, to those evils that harm both us and society at the same time.
1861
The members [of society] are united by bonds that extend far beyond the brief moments when exchange takes place.
1893
Do they not seem to have separated them from all of nature, by ravishing from them at once the sky, the sun, the water, and the earth, so that the monster [...] should no longer enjoy any of the elements which are regarded as the principle of all that exists?
79 BC
Head and neck of a marble figure
2700–2300 BCE
I am poor, but I have a just opinion of poverty; what does it matter to me then that they pity me for my poverty!
c. 108 AD
Rights of humanity opposed to property rights! What jargon!
1776
The subject is well worth the trouble of reading it.
1574
I do not fear that [democratic peoples] will meet tyrants in their leaders, but rather guardians.
1835-1840
Terracotta statuette of a woman
early 3rd century BCE
Although [...] all men are equal, [...] age or virtue may give some superiority. [...] However, all this agrees very well with that equality in respect to the dominion of one over another.
1690
It is equality of origin that compels us to seek an equality founded on law.
c. 387 BC
The physician, or the politician, whose prognostics are almost always right [...] gives a very clear proof of his talent and capacity.
1623
A warlike constitution is not yet war; it can and should rather prevent it by a decisive preponderance of reasons [...].
1796
Bronze phiale (libation bowl) with four swinging handles
ca. 550 BCE
Potency and act divide all being [...].
c. 1270
Equality is the basis of liberty, as poverty is the source of servitude.
100-120 AD
For Epicurus, there is no good for man outside of himself; the only good he possesses in relation to the world is the negative movement of being free from this world.
1841
There is a kind of contradiction between the two principles of human nature upon which religion is founded. Our natural terrors make us see a wicked deity [...]; our inclination to praise paints it as excellent and all-perfect.
1757
Surprised, or Infidelity Found Out
1732
Poetry consists in imitation.
c. 335 BC
Like a man who walks alone and in the dark, I resolved to go so slowly [...] that if I did not advance far, I would at least guard myself from falling.
1637
[...] the poor and the rich equally unhappy with their station, and consequently equally unjust and blind, for they envy one another, and believe each other to be happy.
1746
[Their] weakness prevents them from making a decision as soon as there is the slightest doubt.
1513-1519
The Return of the Cattle
ca. 1773–75
It is also intended that both the torch-bearers and lantern-bearers be known persons with a domicile in this city [...], without which they will not be accepted.
1662
One must save the sharpness and brilliance of the mind for subjects that deserve it, just as the lion reserves its efforts for dangers worthy of it.
1636
Paganism sacrificed bodies, whereas Christianity sacrifices souls.
1842-1845
One will never find a body of which one can say that it is truly a substance. It will always be an aggregate of several [...], beings by aggregation having only as much reality as there is in their ingredients.
1686
Interior of a Kitchen
ca. 1642–44
God [...] is, in short, nothing but a clumsy prohibition: Thinking is forbidden!
1888
Grace alone can give courage while leaving tenderness intact, or tenderness while leaving courage intact.
1947
Books against good morals are sometimes tolerated, but those that attack the very foundation of Religion so strongly never go unpunished.
17th century
All perception is already memory.
1896
Portrait of a Woman, Said to Be Marie de Mautesson
ca. 1830
This intellectual freedom is abolished [...] when the intermediary of motives, the understanding, is disturbed permanently or only temporarily.
1839
I have pulled the tiger's whiskers, and I am very lucky to have escaped its teeth.
4th century BC
The imaginative man walks in his head like a curious person in a palace where his steps are constantly diverted by interesting objects; he comes and goes, he never leaves it.
1774
The world is an organized and living being, an animal, [...] and full of a great Soul in which all particular souls are contained.
c. 253-270 AD
Marble relief fragment with the head of Mars
early 3rd century CE
The interest of the state, that pretext invented to betray one's promise with impunity.
1776-1777
All religions claim to emanate from heaven; all forbid the use of reason [...]; all claim to be true, to the exclusion of others.
1766
We can grasp virtue in such a way that it becomes vicious, if we embrace it with a desire too harsh and violent.
1580
Why then should I be outraged or grieve, if I am but a few moments ahead of the common catastrophe?
63-64 AD
Upper right corner of a marble sarcophagus: head of a Black African and a maenad
1st quarter of the 3rd century CE
One cannot suffer admiration for antiquity to become the master of reason, and for it to be, as it were, forbidden to use one's mind to examine the sentiments of the ancients.
1674-1675
To feel is our entire existence, and to judge is but to discern a circumstance in a prior perception, that is, to feel distinctly a part of what was at first felt confusedly.
1805
Who would be the most detestable man in any society? The man of nature, who, having made no convention with his fellows, would obey only his own whim.
1772
To have only reason on one's side is not to fight on equal terms; prejudice is almost always certain to triumph over it [...].
1743
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1650