[...] 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
Conquests are as far from being the origin and foundation of states, as the demolition of a house is from being the true cause of building another in the same place.
1690
There are men [...] profoundly internationalist in peacetime, because they know that justice has no nationality.
1943
You claim that every substantial form is indivisible, indestructible, and ungenerable, and can only be produced by a true creation.
1686
Pilate Washing His Hands
probably 1660s
The Christian heaven or personal immortality.
1841
The surest indication one can have of a man's character is to know the people he frequents.
1513-1519
When [the soul] comes to know the most excellent being, it will then be impossible for any of these passions to make the slightest impression on it.
c. 1660
Many Governments that would not tolerate any discussion of their actions will hesitate to make martyrs and excite the religious fanaticism of the masses.
1851-1852
A Female Allegorical Figure
ca. 1740–50
The idea of thine and mine inevitably derives from that of you and me; we cannot destroy it. Let us ensure that you and I are neither oppressors nor oppressed.
1797-1798
My spirit no longer wants to run on worn-out soles.
1883-1885
We float between a thousand contradictory projects: we want nothing with a free, absolute, constant will.
63-64 AD
[To report things] with as much freedom as sincerity [...] is an immense and delicate work, which demands as much judgment as activity.
1623
Statuette of a runner
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
The vanity of their erudition, leading them to judge before they understand, causes them to fall into gross errors of which other men are not capable.
1674-1675
While we see the [ancients] make such good use of sad leisure [...] putting their consolation in the precepts of philosophy: how are we not ashamed of our vain conversations [...]?
45 BC
Fortune deals with men like a privateer who waits for a ship to be loaded with all its goods before seizing it.
1636
An energetic depiction must be compared with the language that a dying [person] spoke.
c. 1552-1553
Limestone hand holding a pyxis and a branch of leaves
3rd–1st century BCE
What a pity, what a poverty of thought, to have said that beasts are machines, deprived of knowledge and feeling!
1764
What a consolation [...] to think that what is said of you was said before of Jesus Christ!
1263-1264
We can [...] place cleanliness among the virtues [...] it makes us agreeable to others & serves to win their friendship & goodwill.
1751
Instead of the apotheosis of Reason, we have made another of Instinct; and we call everything instinct which we cannot establish on a rational basis.
1869
A Man with the Initials FM
1751
[Prosperity is] the largest population that [...] is reconciled with the abundance to which all citizens have a right to claim.
1776
It is an equal impiety to believe in the birth of the Gods and in their death; for in either way, there is a moment when the Gods are no more.
c. 350 B.C.E.
The slowing of Time for the supposedly mobile system [...] is merely represented and [...] does not affect real Time.
1922
Justice is the feeling of a soul in love with order, and which is content with its own.
1746
Mother and Child by the Sea
1830
The contemplation of the One is that supreme revelation of the mysteries that the hierophant alone sees in the sanctuary and can only communicate to the initiated.
c. 253-270 AD
There is in the meditation of honest thoughts a kind of well-being that the wicked have never known; it is that of being pleased with oneself.
1761
Without [metaphysical principles], there would generally be neither security nor purity to hope for in the doctrine of virtue.
1797-1798
Institutions are neither absolutely plastic, nor absolutely resistant to any deliberate modification.
1922
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE
The modifications were crucial; they concerned the main situations which had seemed to us to make the play inadmissible.
1926
One has no reason to fear what one does not know.
1643-1649
The course of an individual's life, however complicated it may appear, forms an orderly whole, having its determined tendency and its meaningful significance, just like the most carefully composed epic.
1836
Supreme goodness [...] consists in not loving. [...] Supreme goodness is abstract, global, undifferentiated benevolence, which is not contrary to concrete benevolence [...].
4th century BC
The Afternoon Meal (La Merienda)
ca. 1772
Does [the theologian] insult the passions? It is the pendulum mocking its spring, and the effect disowning its cause.
1772
The shame [...] consists not in giving more than one has promised, but in being forced to give; and it is a humiliating necessity which circumstances make law for us.
100-120 AD
Knowledge, whether it deals with the past, the present, or the future, is always the same.
c. 380 BC
What am I then? A living being endowed with reason. Now, what is asked of such a being?
c. 108 AD
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1815
It was necessary for Jesus Christ to come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species were naturally similar and equal.
1835-1840
If to philosophize is to doubt, [...] then to trifle and fantasize, as I do, must be to doubt all the more.
1580
Churchmen are commonly reproached for their harshness; in them, it is an effect of the most sublime virtue; a good Christian must be perfectly insensitive.
1768
We have been loaded with heavy chains, which we are condemned to shake endlessly, with no hope of breaking them; let us try [...] to drag them.
1760
Tobias Curing His Father's Blindness
1630–35