You think misfortune crushes him? Misfortune serves him.
63-64 AD
This [...] is the shooting of a shooter, of a man who wants to shoot, of a man who knows he is shooting (art, not nature).
4th century BC
One must never touch the established Government except when it becomes incompatible with the public good.
1762
Psychology (anthropology) will necessarily be the theology of the future.
1841
A Spanish Garden
1871
The laws of gravity are the same in whatever medium bodies are immersed.
1663
Those who [...] asserted that nothing can be known with certainty, [propagate] a discouraging opinion.
1620
Is the voice of my conscience not enough? It is there that God speaks to me far more reliably than through the mouths of others.
1763
What experience teaches me under certain circumstances, it must teach me always and teach everyone, and its validity is not limited to the subject or their state of the moment.
1783
Limestone statuette of a beardless male votary with a wreath of leaves
310–30 BCE
Through his abdication, Charles V in turn rose above fortune.
1636
The reduplicative proposition by reason of cause requires, to be true, [...] that what the reduplication falls upon expresses the cause of what is carried by the predicate.
c. 1270
Disorders of the imagination are extremely contagious, and [...] slip and spread into most minds with great ease.
1674-1675
This act of judging consists in seeing that the idea I have of one thing belongs to the idea I have of another.
1817
Brackets, 2
6th century BCE
The absence of discussion causes not only the grounds to be forgotten, but too often the very meaning of the opinion itself. [...] Instead of a strong conception and a living belief, only a few phrases learned by rote remain.
1859
Just as everyone is the secret impresario of their dreams, so this destiny, which dominates the course of our real life, also comes in some way from this will, which is our own.
1836
The demand [for order and tranquility] is the one which, everywhere and always, predominates in this class after violent upheavals and the resulting commercial disturbances.
1851-1852
Outside of us, reciprocal externality without succession; within, succession without reciprocal externality.
1889
Still Life of Grapes and Peaches
ca. 1617
[Religious forces] invade every object within their reach, whatever it may be.
1912
One dreads, in rendering small services, to form an ill-suited friendship in spite of oneself; one fears good offices...
1835-1840
One willingly made war in order to command; the other commanded in spite of himself, to repel the war being waged against him.
100-120 AD
In these intervals of peace, not all the evils caused by war will be repaired; and yet new obstacles will be placed on commerce.
1776
Faustine Léo (1832–1865)
1842
The soul is the first entelechy of a natural organic body.
384–322 BC
If we had senses sharp enough to discern the small particles of bodies, [...] the yellow color of gold would disappear, and we would instead see an admirable texture of parts.
1689
The inequality of mind caused by the different constitution of men is [...] imperceptible.
1758
In this beautiful season, in abundance, [the flowers] show their bloomed dresses.
1546/1563
Nail
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Most busy themselves seeking the origin of the evil; some say, 'The astrologers threaten us,' others, 'The prophets foretold it.'
1527
The foundation is everywhere the same, which is a fundamental maxim of mine and which reigns throughout my philosophy.
1704
To redeem what is past, and to transform every 'it was' into 'thus I willed it!' — that alone I would call redemption!
1883-1885
Whenever a great event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the Clergy, these things indicate the finger of God, who always has his good friends the Priests in mind.
1768
John Churchill (1650–1722), First Duke of Marlborough
1698
I can have no hope of approaching the truth except by departing from the paths they [the Ancients] have followed.
1649
Marriage is a religious and devout bond: that is why the pleasure derived from it must be a restrained, serious pleasure, mixed with some severity.
1580
Do you take philosophers for magicians, whose occult art can teach you things that surpass ordinary understanding?
1742
[I remembered] an old project that I hold dear to my heart, that of making the masterpieces of Greek poetry [...] accessible to the popular masses.
1953
Marble table leg (trapezophoros) with reliefs of griffins
5th century BCE
All good maxims are in the world, [...] one only has to apply them; but that is very difficult.
1746
It seems to me that courage is the knowledge of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped for, both in war and in all other circumstances.
c. 380 BC
Man is free when he exercises the faculty of the reasonable soul [...]. He is subject to necessity [...] when he exercises the faculties of the irrational soul and the body.
c. 253-270 AD
The very pain that pity causes you to feel makes you worthy of pity.
c. 108 AD
Head of a Child
1768
I am persuaded that it is the wisdom of the doctrine alone which establishes the certainty of divine revelation, and not miracles, which are based only on ignorance.
1661-1676
The more love is distinguished from function, the more nobility it contains.
1926
I exhort the youth to read [the great] works well [...]. This will be time better spent than reading these miserable booklets, where one only persists in foolish disputes.
45 BC
[...] that my successors will do well to think of being powerful and rich!
1764
Joseph-Antoine Moltedo (born 1775)
ca. 1810