[Courage] seems to me to be a sort of endurance of the soul, if I am to speak of the universal nature which pervades them all.
c. 380 BC
The number of volumes in a work depends on the length of the manuscript, [...] on the subject and the way it is treated, all things that concern only the author.
1741-1784
One does not avoid a war; it is only postponed to the advantage of others.
1855
Montaigne is slightly mistaken...
c. 1552-1553
Marble statue of Tyche-Fortuna restored with the portrait head of a woman
1st or 2nd century CE
Fire can be extinguished [...] in two ways: [...] it goes out by itself, or it is suffocated [...]. In the first case, it is old age; in the other, it is a violent destruction.
c. 350 BC
It was not a judgment [...]. It was an abuse of force; [...] a catastrophe, a storm, anything but a judgment, a discussion, a trial.
66 BC
It is entirely superfluous to forbid women what their constitution does not permit them. Competition is sufficient to prevent them from doing anything they cannot do as well as men, their natural competitors.
1869
These precautions had become necessary for public safety; [The city] was prey to thieves and burglars at night.
1662
Dr. Brian Walton (born about 1600, died 1661)
1657
Syllogism is of no help for reasoning.
1689
It is we ourselves who inconvenience ourselves, we ourselves who confine ourselves; that is to say, it is our judgments that put us there.
c. 108 AD
The perception called judgment [...] is always the perception that one idea contains another.
1817
The life of the soul is in its activity and its industry; which has caused it to be attributed a celestial origin.
1772
The Crucifixion, (reverse) Saint Francis of Assisi; The Resurrection, (reverse) An Abbot Saint, Possibly Saint Benedict
1455
Old fool [...] who eats without ploughing and dresses without spinning. You who claim that merely opening your lips [...] is enough to establish the distinction between good and evil.
4th century BC
Equality is the basis of liberty, as poverty is the source of servitude.
100-120 AD
Everyone is much more jealous of the advantages of the mind than of the estimable qualities of the will, and [...] no one would hesitate for a moment to declare for [knavery] rather than for [foolishness].
1764
Happiness consists in rest and in pleasure, it is a state of ease and contentment: happiness flees from vigils; it abhors cares and fatigues.
1742
Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque)
1887–88
Intelligence will at first advise selfishness. It is in this direction that the intelligent being will rush if nothing stops it. But nature is watching.
1932
The attributes that one gives to the Divinity signify only our incapacity or the respect we have for him.
1772
A virtuous habit, which is contracted by the repetition of acts, is not for that reason easily moved [...].
c. 1270
Recognized integrity is the most secure of all oaths.
1839
Bronze jug
ca. 1st century BCE–1st century CE
Whatever you do, return quickly from the body to the soul; you must exercise it night and day.
63-64 AD
To believe that the existence of the world is explained by a creator is a psychological illusion.
1841
The goal of most commentators is not to clarify their authors and seek the truth; it is to show off their erudition and blindly defend the very flaws of those they comment upon.
1674-1675
What reason says is an evil is not an evil in relation to the order and laws of universal nature, but only in relation to the laws of our own nature alone.
1670
Patera
mid 6th century BCE
All religions make man a mere instrument of Providence, and socialism too places men at the service of historical progress, that is to say, the progress of production.
1934
To the selfish and asocial being that has just been born, [society] adds another, capable of leading a moral and social life. This is the work of education.
1922
[With] people one believes to be damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them.
1762
All the movements we make without our will contributing to them [...] depend only on the conformation of our members [...] in the same way that the movement of a watch is produced by the sole force of its spring and the shape of its wheels.
1649
Bronze statuette of a youth carrying a pig
early 5th century BCE
In man, the most elevated thing is a vast and luminous intelligence, the principle of his best-conducted operations [...].
1636
[...] the continual agitation and excitement [...] was certainly not the means to 'restore confidence', as the saying went.
1851-1852
The mechanical arts [...] are like so many two-edged swords that serve sometimes to do evil, sometimes to remedy it.
1620
One can always determine the most probable and the most certain as far as it is possible to know from the given data (ex datis).
1686
Bolt
7000 BCE - 330 CE
The eternal Folly mixes us into it!...
1882
[Evil] consists in privation, that is, in what the efficient cause does not do. This is why the Scholastics used to call the cause of evil deficient.
c. 253-270 AD
[...] the most favorable gift nature has given us, which removes any right to complain about our fate, is to have left us the key to escape.
1580
Some fall asleep on the authority of prejudices and even admit contradictory ones, for want of going to the point where they contradict each other.
1746
Graziella
1878
When conditions are very unequal and [...] permanent, individuals become so dissimilar that one would say there are as many distinct humanities as there are classes.
1835-1840
Man represents only himself; woman represents all of posterity.
1926
The artisan, on the contrary, produces value, since there is value in the forms he gives to raw materials.
1776
Everything yields to interest.
1756
Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx
ca. 530 BCE