How happy we would be, if we found mines rich enough to make all our gold and silver useless!
1776
I appeal to the unprejudiced youth, who love to learn [...].
1758
Temperation is the mutual and corresponding extension of two or more bodies, with their qualities also remaining.
c. 253-270 AD
A beautiful retreat in war brings as much honor as a proud attack.
1636
Lower right corner of a marble sarcophagus, illustrating the discovery of Achilles by Odysseus on the island of Skyros
ca. 160–180 CE
A passionate man who speaks with action has, in his eyes, in his voice, in his gestures, a subtle poison that is shot like an arrow into the people of his faction.
1764
There is no better way to corrupt one's own citizens [...] than to have to govern a city divided by factions.
1513-1519
To trace back to its causes, one must first know it, and to know it, one must study its effects.
1817
Each individual has the absolute right to preserve himself, that is, to live and to act as he is determined by his nature.
1670
Terracotta horse and rider
ca. 750–600 BCE
A religion founded on a bloodthirsty God can only be a religion of blood.
1766
The acquisition of our belief in the law of causality is one and the same with the progressive coordination of our tactile impressions with our visual impressions.
1900
To say if a book is good or bad, what does it matter how it was made?
1761
[...] the Ideas that come by way of Sensation are often altered by Judgment in the minds of grown persons, without their perceiving it.
1689
Bronze shield boss
8th–7th century BCE
To assist, in the sense in which this word is used here, is to be in relation.
c. 1270
What a pity one cannot do without them!
1775-1784
Public opinion [...] creates between [men] a kind of imaginary equality, despite the real inequality of their conditions.
1835-1840
I am on a continuous journey.
1643-1649
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes
ca. 1545–50
If [...] moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are no less for that reason natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason [...] and yet these are acquired faculties.
1861
sea water, if divided into portions, putrefies very quickly, whereas in its total mass it does not putrefy.
c. 334 BC
The essence of man in general.
1841
Does not the adage say: chiseling and polishing are not as good as letting nature act. [...] I let people do as they would, spontaneously, as nature operates.
4th century BC
Head of the Virgin
ca. 1397
We can [...] place cleanliness among the virtues [...] it makes us agreeable to others & serves to win their friendship & goodwill.
1751
What remains of men's thoughts and inner lives [...] is never more than the fragment of fragments; we are missing the intermediate links.
1670
I know that we must suffer [...] the wrongs of our parents. But I also think that one must suffer what can be suffered, and hide what can be hidden.
66 BC
There are two kinds of positive solidarity: the first connects the individual directly to society without any intermediary. In the second, he depends on society because he depends on the parts that compose it.
1893
Head of a satyr
2nd century BCE
As for poetry, it is but a kind of learned dream.
1623
Peace has no prestige or poetry. Justice does.
1957
People haunted by this idea of sacrificing the body to the soul, [...] of ceasing to be but men, are mad; it is not into angels that they transform, but into beasts.
1580
To judge otherwise would be to have a very low idea of the wisdom and power of God.
1715-1716
Limestone statuette of Zeus Ammon
early 5th century BCE
However, Karl Marx did not linger in philosophical speculations, and turned entirely towards the socialist clubs.
March 17, 1883
A divided city is half taken.
c. 1552-1553
Shall I then, if you sail away, sit down and weep because you have left me alone [...].? [...] shall we who have reason be made unhappy by it?
c. 108 AD
Hair [...] enhances the splendor of beauty, and makes ugliness more terrible.
100-120 AD
Standing female figurine
ca. 600–480 BCE
Sight is the sense of the understanding, which is intuitive, and hearing is the sense of reason, which thinks and conceives.
1819
One cannot be just if one is not humane.
1747
Let us know how to bear our fate and yield to time, until an unalterable happiness puts an end to our suffering.
3rd or 4th century AD
Machiavelli does not disregard morality, but he places truth above morality.
1926
Admiral Adam Duncan (1731–1804)
1775
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
c. 375 BC
There is no philosophical writer, with the exception of Aristotle, Descartes, and Locke, who can claim to approach Kant in the extent and height of influence he has exerted on the minds of men.
1827
The 'inner world' is full of mirages and deceptive lights: the will is one of these mirages.
1888
We [...] only want to believe what evidence compels us to believe.
1707
The Chariot of Aurora
1760s