Love [...] is of all feelings the most selfish, and consequently, when wounded, the least generous.
1888
— I will cut off your head. — When did I ever tell you that I was the only one whose head could not be cut off?
c. 108 AD
God can do everything that is possible, but He only wants to do what is best.
1715-1716
All armed prophets have been successful, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed.
1855
Marble head of a girl from a small statue
3rd century BCE
He who in the ordinary affairs of life would admit nothing that was not founded on clear and direct demonstrations could be sure of nothing but perishing in a very short time.
1689
It is when I am stripped of [...] my life and my liberty [...] that the slave takes up arms against the master.
1772
In heroic poetry, all the means explained [...] are applicable. In iambs, as one seeks above all to imitate ordinary language, the most suitable nouns are [...] the proper term, the metaphor, and the ornament.
c. 335 BC
A great proof of [...] superiority is that, without having received any personal insult, he ran up against the wicked for the interest of others.
100-120 AD
Marble female figure
3200–2700 BCE
[...] political power is precisely the official summary of antagonism in civil society.
1847
whenever a proposition is inconceivable, one must suspend judgment [...], but examine its contrary; and if one finds the contrary to be manifestly false, one can boldly affirm the first, however incomprehensible it may be.
circa 1658
There is no other order than that which governs the sequence of numbers, and makes one think of a thousand as easily as of two.
17th century
I couldn't teach it to my son, and at seventy years old, to have a good wheel, I still have to make it myself.
4th century BC
Terracotta female head
late 3rd–2nd century BCE
One must clearly distinguish the force and beauty of words from the force and evidence of reasons.
1674-1675
To be happy, desire must be neither too strong nor too weak.
1742
If [...] moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are no less for that reason natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason [...] and yet these are acquired faculties.
1861
In a battle, one had to avoid encountering a friend who was on the opposing side, and spare him.
1580
Garden of the Painter at Saint Clair
1908
There are sensitive egoists, [...] who suffer from the misfortune of those who love them, because it disturbs their own peace of mind.
1926
The Americans have sought by all possible means to bring the jury within the reach of the people, and to make it as little of a burden as possible.
1835-1840
The hallucinating person is therefore a man who dreams while awake.
1764
All that exists in the universe is the product of the mixture of the infinite and the finite.
c. 360 BC
Portrait of a Man, possibly Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini
1494(?)
Adversity [...] is close to a good outcome when it becomes extreme.
1636
The mind has, so to speak, its parts, and its parts have their proportions. [...] Few people, however, have occupied themselves with dissecting the soul, and it is an art that no one is ashamed of ignoring completely.
1745
Since a more deeply felt need gives things a greater value, [...] the value of things increases in scarcity, and decreases in abundance.
1776
The first reason for voluntary servitude is custom.
c. 1552-1553
Terracotta horse and rider
ca. 750–600 BCE
[...] man dies only as a consequence of Adam's sin; and if, by baptism, this sin is erased, how is it that Christians are still subject to death?
1766
It is of the essence of the things of the mind not to lend themselves to measurement.
1919
Reasons convince, sentiment carries away, illusions daze; time alone and the frequent repetition of the same acts produce the state of calm and ease called habit.
1805
The joy of learning is as indispensable to studies as breathing is to runners.
1942
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE
Know that all those who have saved, helped, and enlarged their homeland have a place prepared for them in heaven, where they will enjoy endless bliss.
54-51 BC
Humility is sufficient to lead to God.
1263-1264
[A remedy is] certain in the hands of a good practitioner [...] but [it is a] deadly instrument in the hands of an ignorant person.
1623
[In myths] [...] that which is by nature eternal is said to be begotten and born.
c. 253-270 AD
The Glorification of the Giustiniani Family
1783
Servitude debases men to the point of making itself loved.
1747
It appears to be the last degree of considered corruption; and yet it is the common lot of those who have not yet had time to be corrupted.
1764
Education is an eminently social thing.
1922
Revealed belief corrupts [...] the moral sense, [...] unfortunately it does even more, it treacherously poisons the sense of truth, which is the most precious, the most delicate, the most divine in our being. Therein lies its true crime against humanity.
1841
Marble stele (grave marker) of a woman
ca. 375–350 BCE
In the state of nature, where everyone is their own judge [...] it is inconceivable that cunning could be considered culpable.
1670
They smelled of war, of labor, of man, in short.
63-64 AD
The ultimate goal of any love affair [...] is, in reality, superior to all other goals of human life [...]. For it is nothing less than the composition of the future generation that is decided there.
1819
One never knows how to command well except for what one knows how to execute oneself.
1762
Terracotta woman baking bread
ca. 600–480 BCE