The clergy are commonly reproached for their harshness; in them it is an effect of the most sublime virtue; a good Christian must be perfectly insensitive.
1768
What are desire and joy, if not a will that consents to what pleases us? And what are fear and sadness, if not a will that turns away from what displeases us?
c. 253-270 AD
If you take so much care [...] to prolong your life by a few days, what should you not do to make it eternal?
1263-1264
As soon as victory was won, the middle classes were again seized by their old mistrust of the 'anarchic' working classes.
1851-1852
Marble fragment of a hero relief
late 5th century BCE
Ridiculous piety, which, under the pretext of explaining one passage of the Bible by other passages, subordinates the clear places to the obscure ones, the true and sound parts to those that are altered and corrupted!
1670
There is no soul so weak that it cannot, if well-directed, acquire an absolute power over its passions.
1649
The divisions of the sciences are not at all like different lines that coincide at a single point, but rather like the branches of a tree, which unite in a single trunk.
1623
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation, those who dissent from the opinion even more than those who hold it.
1859
A Patrician Couple
1730
Rest and liberty seem to me incompatible; one must choose.
1762
In democratic countries, the poor man himself has a high idea of his personal worth. He contemplates himself with complacency and readily believes that others are looking at him.
1835-1840
The laws of nature [...] are as intelligible and as clear to a rational creature [...] as the positive laws of societies and states can be; and even [...] clearer and more evident.
1690
Wherever the law, without force, cannot protect the weak from the powerful, opulence can be seen as a means of escaping injustice [...].
1772
Bronze handle attachment with duck heads
1st century BCE
The real origin of a legend [...] doubtless dates back to the obscure times of an autonomous civilization.
1926
Is it not madness [...] to have such vast desires with such limited needs?
42-43 AD
[The search for sensation] leads one to consider loved ones as mere opportunities to enjoy or suffer [...]. One lives among ghosts. One dreams instead of living.
1934-1942
To consider what is harmful as harmful, to be able to forbid oneself something harmful, is still a sign of youth, of vital force. The exhausted person feels attracted to what is harmful[...]
1888
Upper right corner of a marble sarcophagus: head of a Black African and a maenad
1st quarter of the 3rd century CE
The limits we raise to circumscribe each science intercept the light and necessarily cast shadows. Let us remove the limits, and at once the shadows dissipate.
1768
The philosopher Chrysippus would not have been of that opinion, and I share his way of thinking.
1580
Athens had nothing more to fear from anyone, except from itself, a kind of danger that states never feel, any more than does the pride of mere individuals.
c. 350 B.C.E.
When one passes away with a body full of health and a soul full of tenderness, how could one not be an object of regret?
4th century BC
Bronze statuette of a comic actor
ca. 1st–2nd century CE
We only enjoy other people; the rest is nothing.
1746
Vanity, for example, stirs us much more than the love of truth [...].
1674-1675
Because the individual is not self-sufficient, it is from society that he receives everything he needs, just as it is for society that he works.
1893
The copyist, unintelligent or inattentive, has lost [...] the author's meaning.
c. 1552-1553
Grave stele with Hoplite Battle Scene
ca. 390 BCE
Considered up close, [the great men] were men whom love of their own interests made act against their conscience and nature; men whose acts are all worthy of the deepest contempt.
4th century BC
It is enough to define a lie as a willfully false statement made to another man.
1797
There is more advantage [...] in raising suspicion with veiled words than in putting forward something that could be contested.
86-82 BC
To be fit for good company, one must have wit as well as politeness.
1751
Terracotta head of a youth
early 3rd century BCE (?)
If quickness of mind alone should not command in chief, it can at least command in second.
1636
Having reached [...] this degree of elevation, the ambitious acquire such importance that they become feared by ordinary citizens and respected by magistrates.
1513-1519
But there is only one way, one path to learn to know, and that is to love.
1896
Extension is an attribute that cannot constitute a complete being, [...] it expresses only a present state, but in no way the future and the past, as the notion of a substance must.
1686
The Last Supper
ca. 1325–30
Excommunicated [...], he sustained himself through war.
1753-1754
Our perceptions being fleeting and transitory, their succession in our mind provides no means of dividing their duration [...] into distinct portions, separated in a fixed and precise manner.
1817
Trust me [...]: you can trust no one.
c. 108 AD
My body, an object meant to move objects, is therefore a center of action; it cannot give rise to a representation.
1896
Terracotta horse and rider
ca. 750–600 BCE
Nothing should be disdained that pertains to the history of our customs; we like to know how those who preceded us did things.
1662
So much does joy, when not moderated by reason, make a man beside himself, and stirs his soul more than sadness and fear!
100-120 AD
It is a great dream that this One being dreams: a dream, but a dream of such a kind that all its characters dream it with him. Hence it is that everything is in everything, that everything fits with everything.
1836
Silence [...] at first seemed the wisest course to take in this rather delicate circumstance.
1763
Statuette of Herakles
3rd century BCE–2nd century CE