To rise to the highest point of greatness, one [of the powers] must exalt the passions in man, and the other must destroy them.
1772
Let us establish as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are always right: there is no original perversity in the human heart.
1762
In all these inquiries our Knowledge hardly extends beyond our experience.
1689
This force [...] is itself without cause, and consequently inexplicable.
1620
Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant
2nd half of 3rd century BCE
The Indian owed nothing but to himself; his virtues, his vices, his prejudices, were his own work: he had grown up in the savage independence of his nature.
1835-1840
To annihilate in one's own person the subject of morality is to uproot from the world, as far as one can, the very existence of morality itself.
1797-1798
The most serious mistake [...] would be to confuse matter and form. The object can never bear the proof.
1934
[...] this is the origin of the inclination we have to believe [our first knowledge] is innate.
1754
Standing tambourine player
ca. 600–480 BCE
Everything has its source in the nature of the human mind. All powerful men [...] had their messengers; it was plausible that the gods had them too.
1756
I abandoned my homeland so that it would not be stained with the blood of citizens.
September 57 BC
The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
1882
What is it to be exiled? Is it to be somewhere other than Rome?
c. 108 AD
Steatite (?) pendant in the form of a bull's head
ca. 2200–1050 BCE
There is no middle ground between being and not being, and one excludes the other [...]; the same is true of contradictories, because one attributes being and the other non-being to the same subject.
c. 1270
I desire neither reputation nor fortune, because these things do not bring happiness.
4th century BC
When discussing a question, the first thing to do is to properly understand the ideas being compared [...]. Not only is this the first thing to do, but it is the only one.
1805
I thought like a wise man and acted like a fool. But I was not unaware of it...
1741-1784
Woman Sewing
1909
The Scripture [...] speaks a human language and adapts itself to the opinions of the common people; for its object is not to teach philosophy [...].
1661-1676
A solid and sure judgment, and a spirit all of fire, are [...] qualities that attract the name of prodigy to the man in whom they are united.
1636
The subject is well worth the trouble of reading it.
1574
One never thinks one has a mere opinion when one thinks that the thing cannot be otherwise: on the contrary, one then thinks one has knowledge.
c. 350 BCE
Amulet
7000 BCE - 330 CE
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
What is enough for nature is not enough for a mortal.
63-64 AD
Thus, when a new doctrine is offered to us, we have every reason to be wary of it and to consider that before it came to be, the contrary doctrine prevailed.
1580
The text of the first edition [...] represents the initial form of the author's thought.
1643-1662
Agnes Sewell
possibly ca. 1800
Invention is the sole proof of genius.
1746
Strong imaginations are extremely contagious; they dominate the weak ones; they gradually give them their same turns of thought and imprint their same characters upon them.
1674-1675
If martyrs proved the truth of a religion, there is no religion, nor sect, that could not be regarded as true.
1766
By saying that things are not good by any rule of goodness, but by the sole will of God, one destroys, it seems to me, without thinking, all love for God and all his glory.
1686
Marble grave stele of Demetrios
1st century BCE
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
The contradiction of faith and love.
1841
Every animal is sympathetic to itself. [...] all things will experience common affections insofar as they constitute parts of the one animal.
c. 253-270 AD
[...] the frame of a memory is above all a place, which triggers the memory of a date.
1890
Louis Morau
1785
Often the people desire their own ruin, deceived by a false appearance; and nothing is easier than to sway them with vast hopes and dazzling promises.
1513-1519
The Imperial Constitution [...] was at the same time, full of contradiction as it was, the most liberal constitution in all Germany. Its greatest fault was that it was a mere sheet of paper, with no power to back up its provisions.
1851-1852
You promise to make me happy, and you want to use [...] reason and the rules of art. But does my happiness not depend on my internal constitution?
1742
This inequality in distinguished characters comes from a lack of philosophy: nature alone, without the help of science, produces virtue in them, like wild fruits that grow by themselves without cultivation.
100-120 AD
Marble sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysos and the Seasons
ca. 260–270 CE
Therefore, what you are describing is not a part of virtue, but virtue as a whole.
c. 380 BC
The interest involved is that of security, the most vital of all interests [...]. Nothing would have any value to us [...] if we could be deprived of a good an instant after having possessed it.
1861
Kant deserved well of morality in one respect: he purified it of all concern for happiness [...]. The Ethics of the ancients was a doctrine of happiness; that of the moderns, most often, a doctrine of eternal salvation.
1840
There is exactly under these syllables what you will find there, but you must look for yourself.
1926
Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800)
1792