Truly foolish is the one who tires their mind and wears out their body to reach such an end.
4th century BC
This [self-]love, founded on physical sensibility, is common to all men.
1772
Such a man is [...] above Kingdoms and Duchies: he is his own empire unto himself.
1580
They usually stop at the surface, at external ceremonies [...], they occupy themselves with them entirely. [...] Everything is essential to them, except what is truly essential.
1674-1675
Domestic Scene
1775
No created substance can by itself be a sufficient principle of action [...].
c. 1270
God must not fight for the cowardly: for the law wills that in war one saves one's life by valor and not by prayers.
c. 253-270 AD
Pure concepts of the understanding therefore have absolutely no meaning if they desert the objects of experience and want to be related to things in themselves (noumena).
1783
Substance is not the attribute of any subject.
c. 350 BC
Pin
50 CE - 400 CE
May God grant that civil magistrates take more care to conform to [the Gospel], than to bind the consciences of others by human laws...
1686
Our faults arise because our deliberations always embrace partial facts, never a general plan for life.
63-64 AD
Neither wealth, nor health, nor reputation [...] is in our power, except for the right use of our ideas; this is the only thing that [...] escapes all constraint.
c. 108 AD
The rules of dialectics, applied too late, [...] serve rather to fix errors than to discover truth.
1620
The Return of the Cattle
ca. 1773–75
Why be surprised [...] if the divinity judges it more advantageous for me to leave this life at this very moment?
4th century BC
As long as agriculture was regarded as the primary art, [...] men, far from being able to become soft, were necessarily sober and industrious.
1776
His tears demand the fulfillment of my promises.
59 BC
To have many great inner experiences and to rest upon them and above them with an intellectual eye—this is what makes men of culture who assign a rank to their people.
1881
Bronze youth
late 5th century BCE
There was [...] a marvelous change in the will of the people: they exhorted one another and roused themselves to begin the work.
100-120 AD
Perception disposes of space in the exact proportion that action disposes of time.
1896
In private life, one distinguishes between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does. In historical struggles one must make a still sharper distinction.
1851/1852
The conscience gives more satisfaction, during the last moments of one's life, than indignation [...] causes vexation.
1643-1649
Statuette of a man
4th–1st century BCE
If there is a supreme intelligence [...] let us be assured that it takes pleasure in seeing us fulfill the purpose of our existence, by enjoying all the pleasures for which we were created.
1742
Men's minds are generally too dull to penetrate to the heart of things at first glance, but they are sharpened by deliberating, listening, and debating.
1677
In art, geometry intervenes to halt and symmetrize the exuberances of life.
1926
[...] heroism [...] receives a mortal blow only when [its] weaknesses are declared.
1636
Saint Bernardino
ca. 1460–70
I want to show you, and everyone else, that I know how to give and take away as I please.
1518-1527
Our deal is my torment; [...] take back your benefice.
1764
It is therefore the people themselves who allow themselves to be, or rather cause themselves to be, dominated, since by ceasing to serve they would be free; it is the people who enslave themselves, who cut their own throats.
c. 1552-1553
In the century we live in, efforts have been made from all sides to simplify knowledge [...], to put it within everyone's reach.
1768
Pietà
ca. 1657–60
'The artist stands before his finished work of art as before an enigma, about which he can fall into the same errors as others'.
1896
Where has one ever seen men without flaws, without desires, without passions? Do we not carry within ourselves the seed of all vices?
1750
We apply ourselves to chemistry, to astronomy, [...] as if we had nothing more important to know.
1746
Nobility is not hereditary in China, but a personal reward.
1770
Statuette of a warrior-11
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
The only alternative to this interpretation is to admit that the Greeks wrote incoherent things [...]. We have made the mistake of judging them by our own standards.
1953
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
Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.
1859
[Ideas] are at first individual and particular. We then extend them to all similar facts [...] they become general and abstract.
1817
Wall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase
last decade of the 1st century BCE
The ideal rests on nothing if its roots are not grounded in reality.
1893
Here, the responsibility for the actions themselves is replaced by the responsibility for the drunkenness.
1839
Definitions [...] are real when it is known that the defined is possible; otherwise they are only nominal, which should not be trusted.
1686
Let us be careful not to complain about what God takes from us that is dear; instead, let us thank him for having lent it to us for so long.
1643-1662
The Villa Loredan, Paese
early 1780s