To limit what God can do to what we can understand is to give an infinite scope to our comprehension, or to make God Himself finite.
1689
Either he is healthy, or he is sick; but he is not healthy, therefore he is sick.
c. 1270
To be truly clever, one must avoid appearing so and sometimes even seem a fool.
1609
If a [dissenting] opinion is right, [others] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if it is wrong, they lose an almost equally great benefit: the clearer perception of truth, produced by its collision with error.
1859
The Glorification of the Giustiniani Family
1783
What determines the will of a sufficiently numerous assembly is not so much passion as reason.
1677
By living without committing the slightest injustice, which is, in my eyes, the most beautiful way to prepare a defense.
4th century BC
To conquer oneself, to suppress one's anger, to moderate victory [...] is to do more than a hero, it is to equal a divinity.
46 BC
The passions that most deeply agitate the Americans are commercial passions and not political passions, or rather, they carry the habits of business into politics.
1835-1840
Silvered bronze roundel with satyr head (one of a pair)
ca. 325–300 BCE
[...] praise the goodness of kings [...] and the submission of their subjects.
c. 1552-1553
Obedience is a vital need of the human soul.
1943
The goal you pursue is doubtful, only the crime is certain.
62-65 AD
We often sacrifice the greatest pleasures of life to the pride of sacrificing them.
18th century
Bronze statuette of Mercury
1st century CE
Man can only become man through education. He is only what it makes of him.
1797-1798
To say many things in few words.
1670
An aggressor may attack a rival's ally, hoping only to irritate his patience in order to get an opportunity to fight him.
1513-1519
Outside of us, reciprocal externality without succession; within, succession without reciprocal externality.
1889
Terracotta head of a woman
late 4th–early 3rd century BCE
An outburst, escaped in certain moments, can put the hero on the same level as the common man; it can even put the latter above the former.
1636
The essence of man in general.
1841
The gatekeeper, from his bed in his nightshirt, by means of a certain device he pulls and pushes, opens the gate more than a hundred good paces from his room.
1774
This work of erudition is a work of taste, also of good literature: it deserves to remain.
1926
The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve
1475
To excel, without making one's excellence felt, that is the conduct that makes one loved everywhere.
4th century BC
The knowledge of all the opinions [...] of other men [...] is not so much a science as a history.
1674-1675
Their pyramids are praised; but they are the monuments of an enslaved people.
1764
Only he who transforms himself remains my kin.
1886
Curettes ?
670 BCE - 330 CE
As the gods acquire more knowledge and authority, they become more fearsome.
1757
If the universe is sympathetic to itself because it constitutes one animal, and if we are affected because we are contained within this one animal [...], why would continuity not be necessary for us to sense a distant object?
c. 253-270 AD
The law of nature is that he who is better has more than he who is lesser of that for which he is better; and you will never be indignant.
c. 108 AD
Legislators and rulers, these are the true preceptors of the mass of humankind, the only ones whose lessons are effective.
1797-1798
Olivier Journu (1724–1783)
1756
Do not make promises when you are about to get the result, only to withdraw [the promise] once you have obtained it.
329-323 BC
The satisfaction of consciousness [...] is illusory because it is immediate, imaginary, and hallucinatory; [...] because the subjects these philosophies stage are [...] themselves abstract, imaginary.
1841
Who does not see, in these sublime counsels, the language of enthusiasm, of hyperbole? Are these marvelous counsels not made to discourage man, and to cast him into despair?
1766
Just as play is the aesthetics of physical life, and art the aesthetics of intellectual life, [performing acts beyond duty] is the aesthetics of moral life.
1893
Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan
1633
If every man could read into the hearts of all others, there would be more people who would want to go down than those who would want to go up.
1782-1789
[...] philosophers themselves, in the schools, investigating whether palpitations of the heart and changes of countenance in perilous circumstances are marks of timidity, or whether they are merely the consequences of a constitutional defect or a natural coldness [...].
100-120 AD
To be accessible to laughter, the soul must be in a state of calm and equality; and the wicked man is perpetually in action and at war with himself and with others.
1740s
[...] anxiety will appear to be the sole driving force of powers: they will commit themselves [...] to the most ruinous projects, only to execute them in an even more ruinous manner.
1776
Portrait of a Man, Said to Be John Durham
ca. 1790
Above all, we should ensure that children do not use words to which they do not associate any clear notion.
1909
The fires of dawn are not as sweet as the first glances of glory.
1746
A great princess [...] once said [...] that she did not believe there were two perfectly identical leaves. A witty gentleman [...] was convinced by his own eyes that a difference could always be noticed.
1704
I entertain these feelings only as friends whom I do not believe I shall keep.
1643-1649
Girl in a Sailor's Blouse
1918