Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life.
1851/1852
What beauty and magnificence are for the artist, the prosaic and ordinary being cannot conceive.
1896
Others, on the contrary, go running after the most minute details, which have no influence on the substance of actions.
1623
Let my root grow [...] and in this way the fruit will force its way into being, even if I did not wish it.
c. 108 AD
The Return of the Cattle
ca. 1773–75
The sole defect, in a sense, of all works, is that they are too long.
1746
It is on the touchstone of contradiction that [opinions] must be tested.
1772
[One] will find [...] from the supreme God down to the dregs of things, a single connection, binding itself with mutual links and nowhere interrupted; and this is Homer's golden chain.
c. 253-270 AD
It is impossible to think of you without thinking of God.
1942
Saint Vincent, Patron Saint of Lisbon
1525
By what rewards or by what threats will you persuade someone to love what they hate, or to hate what they love?
1677
Education makes good men, and good men do noble deeds.
c. 387 BC
[The federative power] must be left to the prudence and wisdom of those that have it, to be managed for the public good.
1690
Republics whose wills are uncertain never know how to make a good decision except when necessity obliges them to.
1513-1519
Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Catherine of Siena
about 1476–80
Science [...] designates a certain relation to that which is susceptible to being known by science.
c. 1270
[...] a single man will be able to press as hard with this screw as a hundred could do without it, provided only that one subtracts the force required to turn it.
1637
Nothing that can escape us should be counted among the things necessary for happiness; for it is not possible to be happy as long as one fears losing what makes one so.
45 BC
Whatever the duties with which he was entrusted, the humblest as well as the most exalted, he brought to them the same love of good, the same zeal, an unfailing devotion.
100-120 AD
Portrait of a Woman
1560
[...] the more a memory is renewed, the more easily it awakens all collateral memories, although they become less striking. This is how the association of ideas is established [...].
1801
Do you know the surest way to make your child miserable? It is to accustom him to getting everything.
1762
Adultery [...is] very different in each of the two sexes, both in its motives and in its consequences.
1926
A society of equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.
1861
Faustine Léo (1832–1865)
1842
Many popular religions, judging by the conceptions of common men, are truly a kind of demonism.
1757
It is not the height: it is the slope that is terrible!
1883-1885
There is no difference between letting one's passion be seen, and lending certain weapons for others to make themselves our master.
1636
This mathematical calculation of the unknown motion of a celestial body [...] awaits its confirmation from future observations.
1755
Statuette of a woman
3rd–1st century BCE
The path of precept is long; that of example is short and effective.
63-64 AD
All purely positive, or absolute, reality is a perfection; and imperfection comes from limitation, that is, from the privative.
1710
I do not count my borrowings, I weigh them.
1580
Reason develops effortlessly as long as we exercise it on uncomplicated objects; but powerless on its own to handle others, [...] it needs levers.
1768
Capriccio with St. Paul's and Old London Bridge
ca. 1745
[Mature men] do not trust the first person they meet; nor do they distrust everyone, but their judgments are in accordance with the truth.
329-323 BC
He must wish, after having thus known what he is, to also know where he comes from, and what he is to become.
1670
The traveler's jolt introduces no asymmetry. [...] it resolves into perfectly reciprocal manifestations involving the invariable systems.
1922
Therefore, one must not believe men because men have spoken, for every man is a deceiver.
1674-1675
George Moore (1852–1933)
1879
Sexual desire [...] is the quintessence of all the deception of this noble world. It promises so unspeakably, so infinitely [...] so many things, and it keeps its promise so miserably!
1851
A free judgment offends the ears of the great.
1574
They neither steal nor swindle; but they are to swindlers what swindlers are to rogues.
1748
People who are not afraid, in times of revolution, are like princes in the army; they make a great impression with very ordinary actions, because the particular position they occupy naturally sets them apart from the crowd.
1893
The Organ Rehearsal
1885
The relationships that [restitutive rules] determine [...] are established not between the individual and society, but between restricted and special parts of society, which they link together.
1893
[Theurgy] employed by a pontiff in the coronation of kings contributes to making the leaders of nations more respectable in the eyes of the people, and imprints upon them an entirely divine character.
1766
It seems to me that the truth of this principle is strangely abused.
1764
To impose on the people what they please to call their experience, is that not worse than abandoning them to themselves?
4th century BC
Two marble portrait heads from a relief
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE