What interest can a fond mother have in view, who loses her health by her assiduous attendance on her sick child, and [...] afterwards dies of grief?
1751
All great power is a danger at the start.
c. 108 AD
In heroic poetry, all the means explained [...] are applicable. In iambs, as one seeks above all to imitate ordinary language, the most suitable nouns are [...] the proper term, the metaphor, and the ornament.
c. 335 BC
The will is but a desire that is not fought, that has its object in its power, or at least believes it has [...].
1746
Basket of Fruit
ca. 1620
If you want our city to be immortal [...], we must guard against our own passions, against turbulent men eager for revolution; against internal evils and treacherous plots hatched in our own homes.
63 BC
[...] so that space or interval is not only body, but body between two or more bodies.
1653-1662
Of the death of the body politic.
1762
Insults and disgrace are much more deeply felt than praise and applause [...].
1674-1675
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Bénévent
1808
By substituting the word Priests for that of God, Theology becomes the simplest of sciences. [...] there are no true Atheists, since, unless one is an imbecile, one cannot deny the existence of the Clergy.
1768
When we compare [...] a future Pleasure or Pain [...] we often make false Judgments, in that we measure these pleasures and pains by the different distance at which they are from us.
1689
Every society is a moral society.
1893
Men are not content with the obedience of women, they arrogate to themselves a right over their feelings. [...] they neglect nothing to enslave their minds.
1869
A Patrician Couple
1730
To observe and scrutinize the movements of centuries, the characters of personages, the vacillations in counsels, the subterranean conduits of actions [...].
1623
To save its purse, it must forfeit the crown, and the sword that is to safeguard it must at the same time be hung over its own head as a sword of Damocles.
1851/1852
The truly honorable man [...] is one who [...] sees death at his side without being troubled by it as if it were something new.
circa 65 AD
A diffuse discourse is not a mark of a clear mind, nor a proper means of giving clear ideas to readers.
1715-1716
Terracotta woman baking bread
ca. 600–480 BCE
[Regarding slavery:] Kings must destroy it.
1770
Art for art's sake.
1888
Indiscretion or gallantry = adultery.
1830-1831
There are morbid states that are imitations of healthy states: the latter are no less healthy, and the others morbid.
1932
Copper alloy spearhead
ca. 2500–2000 BCE
All laws that prohibit things innocent in themselves generate a new offense.
1797-1798
The taste one shows for absolute government is in exact proportion to the contempt one professes for one's country.
1856
The property of 'where' (ubi) is to be in every terminated body [...], because place is not due to the indivisible as such.
c. 1270
The fantasy element is very useful in a drama, correcting what is fatally too logical and too predictable in the action.
1926
The Marriage of the Virgin
ca. 1479
By setting [the fine], it would be to admit guilt.
4th century BC
The only thing one could give him was love, 'that homeland of his art,' as he himself calls it.
1896
Only he is cited as a fool who is not a fool of the common foolishness.
1758
The object [...] always remains unknown in itself; but if the connection of representations [...] receives a universal value [...], the object is determined by this relation, and the judgment is objective.
1783
Two fragments of a limestone sarcophagus lid with snakes
first half of the 5th century BCE
It is thought to be a holy thing to have no confidence in reason and in one's own judgment [...]; but this is not piety, it is madness.
1670
In all their actions, they carried integrity and justice.
100-120 AD
[The spirit of the Sage is] superior to heaven, to earth, to all beings, dwells in a body to which it is not attached, [...] and knows everything through global knowledge in its motionless unity.
4th century BC
A meal is not to be compared, it is to be eaten. Likewise, words [...] are eaten to the extent that they are edible, that is, insofar as they contain truth.
1957
Filippo Archinto (born about 1500, died 1558), Archbishop of Milan
mid-1550s
We are ingenious only in mistreating ourselves; it is to this above all that we apply all the resources of our mind, which is a dangerous instrument of disorder.
1580
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
Oh, best of all possible worlds, where are you?
1759
Since no material cause presented itself to the senses, one would have attributed it to its opposite, the immaterial.
1643-1649
Limestone chest with incised decoration
8th century BCE?
April, the perfume of the gods, who, from the heavens, smell the scent of the plain.
1546/1563
Despite the general opinion, money is not the sinew of war.
1855
[Witty remarks and bold actions] have often been like wings to suddenly reach the summit of greatness.
1636
Little by little, everyone, following each other's example, will consume more and more.
1776
Cavalier and Shepherd
1747