Give the French something to love. And first give them France to love. Conceive the reality corresponding to the name of France in such a way that as it is, in its truth, it can be loved with the whole soul.
1943
Is the spirit of an age unfavorable to the undertakings of the priesthood? [...] the church sheds its ferocity, moderates its zeal; it loudly avows the independence of the prince. But is this avowal sincere?
1772
Men have never so abdicated their rights [...] that they have ceased to be an object of fear to the very ones to whom they had given their rights and personal power.
1670
What tragedy has another starting point? What is Euripides' Atreus? A way of seeing. What is Sophocles' Oedipus? A way of seeing.
c. 108 AD
A Country Road
1648
Man represents only himself; woman represents all of posterity.
1926
Courage has more resources against misfortunes than reason.
1747
Because we fulfill a certain function, [...] we are caught in a network of obligations from which we do not have the right to free ourselves.
1893
[...] ideas are dispersed only so that the mind, obliged to bring them together itself, may feel their connection or contrast with more vivacity.
1746
Terracotta male head
5th century BCE
A bad example is the most pernicious doctrine [...] for the indiscreet populace, who thinks that whatever evil is done and suffered is permissible.
c. 1552-1553
But is it ever the time to be vile?
1796
[...] the rainbow is never a complete circle.
c. 334 BC
The investigation of final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, it bears no fruit.
1623
A Peasant with a Bird
1626
He is not miserable enough; art and study must still come and increase his misery.
1580
What is not good is to abandon the Creator to live according to the created good, whether one wants to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole man.
c. 253-270 AD
Thus, there remains only my hypothesis, that is to say, the way of harmony.
1696
The will is a blind power, which can only direct itself toward things that the understanding represents to it.
1674-1675
Terracotta head from a statue
ca. 525–500 BCE
The excess of dependence to which the woman is reduced inspires [...] the idea that the law has delivered her to them as their thing, to be used at their discretion.
1869
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
Figure makes us know the substance [...] better than any other accident.
c. 1270
Right must not be adjusted to politics, but politics must indeed be adjusted to right.
1797
Portrait of a Woman
1657
[It was] not to honor [the deceased], but according to the maxim of Princes to provide for their present safety by the fear of future punishments.
1754
[Heraclitus was the] founder of a sect that did not flourish much.
45 BC
One cannot preserve old grace except by acquiring new grace; otherwise, one will lose what one thinks one holds, like those who, wishing to enclose the light, enclose only darkness.
1656-1657
It is impossible to understand how equality could not end up penetrating the political world as it does elsewhere. [...] They will therefore, in a given time, come to be so on all [points].
1835-1840
The Meeting of Alexander the Great and Diogenes
1605
The mystery of the miracle.
1841
A man [...] cannot, by any compact, bind his children or his posterity. For a son, when he is of age, being as free as his father ever was, no act of the father can [...] take away the son's liberty.
1690
[We act] in the conviction that the affection [a person] has for us will encourage them to take on the task willingly.
1498
[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
Limestone statue of a veiled female votary
1st century BCE
Speech and language are the indispensable instruments of all clear thought. But like any means, [...] these instruments are at the same time a hindrance and a fetter.
1819
If [propositions] are false, it is not in themselves and taken in isolation, but because of their lack of connection with previous true judgments.
1805
One will feel that all parts of Religion lend each other mutual aid, from which results a complete chain of truths that give each other reciprocal support.
1768
The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south, yet these two rivers spring from the same mountain, and are consequently driven by the same principle...
1751
Portrait of a Man
1695
Hair [...] enhances the splendor of beauty, and makes ugliness more terrible.
100-120 AD
Through his abdication, Charles V in turn rose above fortune.
1636
I have become entirely like a mouth [...] I want to hurl my words into the valleys.
1883-1885
The two systems are interchangeable, and everything that is asserted in [one] about [the other] can be repeated in [the other] about [the one].
1922
Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834)
1785
Knowledge, whether it deals with the past, the present, or the future, is always the same.
c. 380 BC
Everything that is done, or that happens anew, is [...] a Passion with regard to the subject to which it happens, & an Action with regard to the one who makes it happen.
1649
The life of a fool is one of ingratitude, anxiety, and a constant lurching toward the future.
63-64 AD
A crime perhaps excusable [...] if poisoning, and especially the poisoning of a husband, could ever be justified.
1753-1754
Terracotta plank-shaped figurine
ca. 1900–1800 BCE