Your kindness appears not only in showing and correcting the flaws in my reasoning, [...] but also in trying to console me [...] with false praise.
1643-1649
If those who love perishable things are miserable [...] what are we to think of those who love honors, power, pleasure, which have no [essence]?
c. 1660
A man is best portrayed in his career, in his works, and in his words.
1896
In the darkness one sees fire, the stars, and their shapes. No one could claim that, in this case, the forms of objects, being imprinted on the dark air, are transmitted to the eye.
c. 253-270 AD
Limestone funerary stele of a boy
3900 BCE - 100 CE
It is not possible to judge wrongly, just as it is not possible to feel wrongly.
1805
If [metaphysics] is a science, how is it that it cannot, like others, obtain universal and lasting assent? If it is not one, how is it that it always affects the appearance of one, and nourishes the mind with an incessant and never satisfied hope?
1783
These trifles, put end to end, form the most important of all stories, that of the friend of our heart.
1759-1774
One recognizes the philosopher by his avoidance of three shiny and noisy things: fame, princes, and women; which is not to say that they do not come to him.
1887
Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque)
1887–88
We take great care to always maintain around our souls the garment of carnal and social thoughts; if we were to cast it aside for a moment, we would have to die of shame.
1942
It must be known that the predicaments [highest categories] cannot be defined.
c. 1270
Heaven and earth give themselves to all beings, whoever they may be, without distinction. I thought you were like them.
4th century BC
Our life depends on the will of others, death depends only on our own.
1580
Scene in the Jewish Quarter of Constantine
1851
What would be surprising is if manuscripts necessarily neglected by the author [...] were to present us with more regularity.
c. 350 B.C.E.
Philosophy is at once wholesome and pleasant.
63-64 AD
What then is this internal ardor that devours me? [...] in the languor of an extinguished genius, does one feel [...] this insurmountable restlessness, this secret agitation that torments me?
1762
[Ignorance] is the opposite of science, & the first disposition to faith. One feels its full importance for the Church.
1768
Bronze batillum (incense shovel)
late 1st–early 2nd century CE
Believe in a good god, and be good.
1775
Were souls all created together at the origin of the world? [...] Questions, as one can see, no less useful than easy to solve.
1623
No one is more prone to mistakes than those who act only upon reflection.
1747
A key advantage of old age is that one more success or failure means nothing.
1870
Marble statue head of a youth
1st or 2nd century CE
There is nothing superfluous (except for the overly delicate).
1574
The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.
c. 375 BC
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
[...] by the mere fact that we speak, [...] we fail to completely translate what our soul feels: thought remains incommensurable with language.
1889
Limestone statuette of a male votary
probably mid-6th century BCE
Extraordinary actions can only come from a heart that is also extraordinary.
1636
In a foreign country, two Americans are friends at once, simply because they are Americans. [...] For two Englishmen, the same blood is not enough: the same rank must bring them together.
1835-1840
The mighty genius which had attended him during his life, followed him after his death as a relentless avenger, pursuing his murderers over land and sea [...].
100-120 AD
To form our taste, it is not enough to study dead languages; we must also cultivate the one that has become natural to us, because it is in this language that we think.
1768
Charles de Saint-Radegonde, called Charles Coguin, Abbot of Anchin
ca. 1511–20
It is not private interest, but the common good that makes states great. It is clear that the common interest is only respected in republics.
1513-1519
If he does not have this talent, he will not know it, even if I were to write it to him a thousand times.
c. 108 AD
If ardent zeal for the fatherland causes [a man's] ruin, who, thereafter, will be so foolish as not to prefer the [...] dangerous and slippery path, to the firm and steady path of virtue?
59 BC
How many revolutions executed or prevented, wars ignited or extinguished, by the intrigues of a priest, a woman, or a minister!
1772
Engraving
18th century
The goal of most commentators is not to clarify their authors and seek the truth; it is to show off their erudition and blindly defend the very flaws of those they comment upon.
1674-1675
The settlement of what belongs to them must be proportioned to what they had the right to hope from fortune, such that each finds it entirely equal to take what is assigned to him or to continue the adventure of the game.
1643-1662
[One must] find ways to repress the excesses and prevent the abuses of that power, which had been entrusted to others for one's own good, and yet was seen to be used only to do harm.
1690
Every individual has, even now, a deeply rooted conviction that he is a social being, that his feelings and aims should be in harmony with those of his fellow creatures.
1861
Mrs. Ralph Izard (Alice De Lancey, 1746/47–1832)
1747
The immortality sought in morality and religion does not consist in this perpetual subsistence alone [...] for, without the memory of what one has been, it would have nothing desirable.
1686
When you realize you are about to be defeated, you can create a diversion, i.e., start talking about something completely different, as if it had something to do with the debate.
1830-1831
Here as elsewhere, what exists is the particular and the individual, and the general is only a schematic expression of it.
1893
Men [...] are inclined to esteem themselves rather above than below their worth, and that is why it is so easy to hurt us by carrying self-esteem too far.
1751
Statuette of a runner
7000 BCE - 30 BCE