What makes books virtuous is that they are readable, and what makes orators virtuous is that they are interesting.
1870
Our entire existence consists in feeling, and we exist only through our sensations, both internal and external.
1817
Functions [...] that are much more arduous than honorable, were bound to drive away all those who combined comfortable means with an education suited to their station.
1856
We pass from a crude life to a simple life, and from a simple life to a soft life through a series of things that habit makes necessary for us.
1776
Arrowhead
7000 BCE - 330 CE
To know neither displeasure nor pleasure, that is the apex of virtue; to be always the same, without alteration, that is the apex of peace; to be attached to nothing, that is the apex of emptiness [...].
4th century BC
When the existence of a thing is affirmed to us, and this thing is of a kind whose possibility we cannot conceive, we must expect its reality to be demonstrated to us by facts.
1840
He puts the entire bourgeois economy into confusion, touches everything that seemed intangible [...] and creates anarchy in the very name of order.
1851/1852
[...] the charity you owe to your kin should make you desire that they yield to reason, but in all things, and not simply in what concerns us; otherwise, it would be an effect of cupidity and not of charity.
1643-1662
Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (1778–1851), Daughter of Louis XVI
1795
Truth is the adequation of the thing and the intellect.
c. 1270
It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks in order to live.
1782-1789
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
[The religion] that will result from poverty [...] will be the least inconvenient, the least sad, the most peaceful, and the most innocent.
1774
Odalisque in Grisaille
ca. 1824–34
[...] the understanding does not derive its laws (a priori) from nature, but imposes them upon it.
1783
It matters little whether a fact from a distant time is told one way or another; it is less dangerous than a mistake in a medical prescription.
1580
Our passions cannot be directly aroused or removed by the action of our will, but they can be indirectly, by the representation of things that are usually joined with the passions we wish to have.
1649
I lend myself to business, I do not give myself to it, and I do not run after opportunities to waste my time.
63-64 AD
Portrait of a Woman, Said to Be Lady Agnes Anne Wrothesley
1791
[This process is seen] as in the composition of ointments and medicines.
c. 253-270 AD
Error [...] consists only in a hasty consent of the will, which allows itself to be dazzled by some false glimmer.
1674-1675
One finds [...] the fundamental, insurmountable antagonism between the mindset of the artist and that of the politician.
1896
None of them, to my knowledge, provides the means to construct the defined object, to manufacture the comic.
1900
Portrait of an Officer
1784
Some fall asleep on the authority of prejudices and even admit contradictory ones, for want of going to the point where they contradict each other.
1746
I call a fool the one who, having committed a folly, does not have the wit and care to smother it on the spot.
1636
You know that all princes have spies.
1773-1774
Its [moral] binding force consists in the existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to violate our standard of right, and which [...] manifests itself [...] in the form of remorse.
1861
Two fragments of a limestone sarcophagus lid with snakes
first half of the 5th century BCE
Tropical harvest, last harvest!…
1888
[The Datery is] a sacred office where, in exchange for money, one can receive benefices, dispensations, graces of the Holy Spirit, and even the right to commit sins.
1768
Logic has introduced obscurity into Language, and has halted the progress of Knowledge.
1689
We cannot develop with the necessary intensity the faculties our function specifically implies without letting the others grow numb from inaction, thus abdicating [...] a whole part of our nature.
1922
Italian Landscape
ca. 1825–28
It is absurd to reproach others for what you do yourself [...] or to push others to do what you do not do.
329-323 BC
The multitude believes more in persons than in things, and [...] is more persuaded by the authority of the speaker than by the reasons he gives.
c. 1552-1553
Once one has acquired the habit of virtues, they become as many pleasures; whereas superstition is always odious and inconvenient.
1757
When one passes away with a healthy body and a soul full of tenderness, how could one not be an object of regret?
4th century BC
Marble portrait bust of a boy
ca. 35–50 CE
No one defends the interests of another except insofar as he believes he is thereby defending his own interests.
1677
A civilization founded on a spirituality of work would be the highest degree of man's rootedness in the universe, and therefore the opposite of our present state, which consists of an almost total uprootedness.
1943
To the importance of the undertaking is joined the difficulty, which is no less.
1623
If you are disgusted with [certain] citizens, make it known: those who [...] still have the freedom of choice, will change their system, will follow another path.
59 BC
Bronze horse bit
8th–7th century BCE
The works of genius are like [...] those superb monuments [...] which, executed by several generations [...], bear the name of the one who finishes them.
1758
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
For my part, I have no one who is closer to me than myself.
c. 108 AD
[...] the essence of the body cannot be extension, but every body, besides extension, must have a substantial form.
1686
François Joseph Lefebvre (1755–1820)
1800