In science, the human mind obeys the action of sensation [...]; whereas, in faith, it obeys the action of the soul, which is the nobler agent.
1623
They inquire about your successes, and one sees that the answer one gives them is not at all the one they expect.
1765-1769
Religious peoples and industrial nations have a particularly serious idea of marriage.
1835-1840
We are bound to our body, our parents, our friends, our prince, our homeland, by ties that we cannot break.
1674-1675
The Forest at Pontaubert
1881
To be known is in contradiction with being in itself, and everything that is known is thereby a phenomenon.
1839
One cannot [...] be mistaken [...] concerning the passions, because they are so close and so internal to our soul that it is impossible for it to feel them without their being truly as it feels them.
1649
[One must ensure that citizens] enjoy only that credit which can be useful and not harmful to liberty.
1513-1519
The will alone to rise toward goodness is praiseworthy, even when a more agile competitor has outpaced us.
1st century AD
Head of a satyr
2nd century BCE
The soul was put into the body to do good, and it would not know evil if it did not do it.
c. 253-270 AD
Any personality, however powerful it may be, could do nothing on its own against an entire society.
1893
Nothing can make a man a member of a society but his actual entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact.
1690
Let them have power, honors, all the advantages: but may those who have worked to save the State at least be able to save themselves.
59 BC
The Agony in the Garden
ca. 1504
The psychological mechanism of these aberrations [...] is based on intellectual laziness.
1926
The man of the world [...] is usually more sensitive to what is well-said than to what is well-thought.
1758
It is impossible to conceive of the immutability of species without their being composed of unalterable principles.
1738
Clarity adorns profound thoughts.
1747
Portrait of an Officer
1784
[Prosperity is] the largest population that [...] is reconciled with the abundance to which all citizens have a right to claim.
1776
One should judge people by their deeds rather than their words.
c. 380 BC
The Lord's head represents the sublime height of his divinity, and his feet the humility of his incarnation; or again, the head is Jesus Christ himself, the feet are the poor who are his members.
1263-1264
To think for oneself is to seek the supreme touchstone of truth in oneself (that is, in one's own reason).
1786
Bronze shield boss
7th century BCE
It is reason that engenders self-love, and it is reflection that strengthens it; it is this that turns man back upon himself [...]. It is philosophy that isolates him.
1755
In society, the liveliness of conversation gives pleasure even to those who do not think of taking part in it; that is why men who speak at length [...] are so unbearable.
1751
The nature of an individual substance or of a complete being is to have a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to have deduced from it all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed.
1686
It is a great fault [...] into which most men fall, to find it difficult to believe that others can know or want what they themselves do not know or do not want.
1580
Bronze statuette of a warrior
7th–6th century BCE
His liberalism had not been understood, and he saw [...] that the religious question served as a pretext for the exercise of many selfish passions.
c. 1552-1553
The great sorrow of human life is that looking and eating are two different operations.
1942
One found in his victories the end of his perils; while the other had, in victory itself, [...] a source of dangers.
100-120 AD
[...] simultaneity is [...] the link, the point of contact between internal duration, which is real duration, and external time [...].
1890
Woman Standing Beside a Balustrade with a Poodle
ca. 1895
To love an angry, capricious, unjust god [...] To love the most dreadful object the human mind could ever conceive! [...] How can one love what one fears?
1766
Providence is evidently the conviction that man has of the infinite value of his existence; it is religious idealism.
1841
If, indeed, you were truly persuaded that it is you who possess the true goods, and that they are mistaken, you would not worry about what they say of you.
c. 108 AD
[Objection:] That this proposition, that a space is empty, is repugnant to common sense.
1647
A City on a Rock
1800
It is solely a matter here of observing our sensibility, its acts, that is to say its different modes, which constitute our different ways of existing.
1817
Springs gush forth naturally. The superior man is so spontaneously. The sky is high, the earth is thick, the sun and moon are bright, all this without a formula.
4th century BC
Academies, founded at the expense of the State, generally aim less to cultivate minds than to restrain them.
1677
I believe that the social relations between the two sexes, which subordinate one sex to the other in the name of the law, are wrong in themselves and now constitute one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.
1869
Engraving
18th century
It is the masterpiece of insight to understand another's heart; it is also the ultimate effort of self-mastery to keep one's own heart unknown to the most skilled scrutineers.
1636
What difference is there between singing interludes and fitting into a tragedy a passage [...] borrowed from some other play?
c. 335 BC
In a revolution, whoever commands a decisive position and surrenders it, instead of forcing the enemy to test his strength by attacking, always deserves to be treated as a traitor.
1851-1852
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men.
1882
View of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme
1896–98