As soon as one departs ever so slightly from the opinion of certain doctors, they erupt in thunder and lightning.
1686
I am going to consult a more certain oracle, it is the voice of my inclinations, it is the cry of my passions. It is this, and not your frivolous writings, which can instruct me in the precepts of nature.
1742
The inhabitants will only become more attached to their prince, by the thought that he is indebted to them because their houses were burned [...] for his defense.
1513
Ignorance and folly easily persuade themselves that they know everything [...]. The great man alone can be modest.
1758
Madame Grand (Noël Catherine Vorlée, 1761–1835)
1783
Even misfortune has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune elevates a courageous spirit, and makes it gather all its forces which it was not using.
1746
[Pride], joined with ambition, becomes completely fierce and intractable.
100-120 AD
Be resolved to serve no more, and you are at once free. [...] Do not support him any longer, and you will see him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
c. 1552-1553
Attention is the state of a man who wants to overcome a difficulty; it is a way of being, produced by the energy of the will; it is an effect and not a cause.
1801
Madame la Comtesse de Boufflers and Thérèse
mid-1760s
Fie on the eloquence that leaves us with a desire for itself, not for the things it describes!
1580
You are not capable of receiving the Holy Spirit as long as you continue to know Jesus Christ only according to the flesh.
1263-1264
Whenever a principle demonstrated to be true seems inapplicable, it is because we are ignorant of the intermediate principle which contains the means of its application.
1797
Such is the fruit of so much blood and so many treasures squandered: all his negotiations, all his wars, had an unhappy end.
1756
Bronze statuette of a bull
early 5th century BCE
The people who dealt with it most seriously [...] have not always had very clear and distinct ideas about it.
1768
The penalty follows the fault, and it is not unjust that the soul which has contracted such or such a nature should suffer the consequences of its disposition.
c. 253-270 AD
Athens was to abuse the hegemony that had been spontaneously devolved to it; and from then on it gathered against itself the jealousies and hatreds that later led to the fratricidal war.
c. 350 B.C.E.
The principal cause of our errors is that our judgments extend to more things than the clear view of our mind.
1674-1675
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1795
By wanting to be what one is not, one comes to believe one is something other than what one is, and that is how one goes mad.
1761
Carefree, mocking, violent—thus wisdom wants us. She is a woman, and she will never love any but a warrior.
1887
The severe word of Kant is a manifesto in which Morality announces that it is free and independent of any kind of revelation, of any kind of God above or below [...].
1841
It is the masterpiece of insight to understand another's heart; it is also the ultimate effort of self-mastery to keep one's own heart unknown to the most skilled scrutineers.
1636
The Meditation on the Passion
ca. 1490
I preferred to expose good people to deploring my fate, rather than plunging them into despair.
September 57 BC
To ask God why he did not give Adam a more perfect will is as absurd as asking why he did not give the circle the properties of a sphere.
1661-1676
I have lived my entire life in piety and justice; so that, feeling a keen admiration for myself, I have found that all those who associated with me had the same opinion of me.
4th century BC
A philosophy of work is not materialistic. [...] It encloses man's relationship with the antagonistic term. The antagonistic term is matter.
1934
Portrait of a Man in a Fur-Trimmed Coat
1535
To be determined by one's own judgment is not something that destroys Liberty. [...] it is what makes for its usefulness and perfection.
1689
There is still a long way to go from promises to effect.
1643-1649
Religion is what must fill, in beings endowed with reflection, a potential deficit in the attachment to life.
1932
When one has entered the path of literary comparisons, one would go far, if common sense or taste did not stop you.
1926
The Spinner
1653
The negation of the will to live in no way implies the destruction of a substance, but purely the act of non-willing: that which has willed until now, no longer wills.
1851
I have drawn lines, without connection, without design, and without order, as they were inspired in me in the tumult of my heart.
1762
[Value] cannot [...] be determined with exact precision. But ultimately, the markets alone make the rule, and the government is obliged to follow it.
1776
It is not through interests, but through the community of memories and the free sympathy of opinions and tastes, that democracy binds brothers to one another.
1835-1840
The Virgin of the Nativity
probably ca. 1500
His misfortune was when he lost his restraint, his honesty, [...] his respect for propriety.
c. 108 AD
I see men [...] spending almost all [their time], which cannot suffice for the essential, on the superfluous.
63-64 AD
The laws of gravity are the same in whatever medium bodies are immersed.
1663
This firm foundation [of utilitarian morality] is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.
1861
Relief from casket
670 BCE - 330 CE
The deceased Sages [...], were they able to deposit their knack, their genius in their writings? If not, the books you read are [...] but the detritus of the ancients.
4th century BC
The agreement of the parties cannot make a clause just which is not just in itself, and there are rules of justice whose violation social justice must prevent [...].
1893
[The Communist Manifesto] has become the profession of faith for the majority of European socialists.
March 17, 1883
Others do not so much impress upon things the image of their mind as that of their passions, never losing sight of the interest of their party.
1623
Terracotta group of women seated around a well head
2nd half of 4th century BCE