There is scarcely any absurdity or mischief which may not be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
1861
To compensate for the departure of the troops [...] a leader capable of commanding the army is needed.
1498
Rare and happy times when one can think freely, and say what one thinks!
1754
In childhood, life presents itself as a theater set seen from afar; in old age, as the same set, seen up close.
1851
The Mass of Saint Basil
1746
The writer wrote in an age of decadence; and he suffered, as much as and more than anyone, the fatal influence of his time.
100-120 AD
To die one day, when you would not wish it, is your obligation: to die whenever you wish it, is your right.
63-64 AD
The will is but a desire that is not fought, that has its object in its power, or at least believes it has [...].
1746
Each one runs enough risks for himself without also running them for another.
1580
Self-Portrait
1795
The more [ideas] extend to a great multitude, the fewer elements they contain specific to each individual.
1817
There is a difference between apposition, mixtion, temperation, and confusion.
c. 253-270 AD
In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
1836
The characteristic and fundamental trait of his mind, in political matters, was hatred and contempt for assemblies.
1893
Head and neck from a marble figure
2700–2500 BCE
[...] 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
Even when a criminal act is certainly harmful to society, the degree of harmfulness [...] is not regularly proportional to the intensity of the punishment it receives.
1893
We should not be surprised, then, if men carry their hatred or their love so far, and if they perform such bizarre and surprising actions.
1674-1675
[...] the consideration of my imperfections has become so familiar that it no longer gives me more emotion than is necessary for the desire to rid myself of them.
1643-1649
Odalisque in Grisaille
ca. 1824–34
Some are born posthumously.
1888
The creation of the world means that it is but a phantom, a nullity. With the beginning of a thing, its end is also necessarily posited.
1841
The amount of metal absorbed by the national circulation and the amount sent abroad for international circulation varies every day.
1865
The very vigor of mind [...] that enabled them to validate their opinions, only made them more capable of extinguishing in their disciples all ardor for new research.
1620
Terracotta statuette of a woman
2nd century BCE
[The work] has always been reprinted with the cancels that the persecutors [...] forced his friends to insert.
1758
A Christian who, as he should, strives for perfection, is the most useless member to his country, his family, and all those around him.
1766
Right must not be adjusted to politics, but politics must indeed be adjusted to right.
1797
What am I then? A living being endowed with reason. Now, what is asked of such a being?
c. 108 AD
Marble stele (grave marker) of a woman
ca. 375–350 BCE
Fortune deals with men like a privateer who waits for a ship to be loaded with all its goods before seizing it.
1636
Good can and does go to infinity, whereas evil has its limits.
1710
The sanctity of this learned man dazzled me as much as the beauty of his divine style. [...] he touched my heart, and I find myself more virtuous for it.
45 BC
It is not without reason that Cartesianism has been seen as a 'philosophy of freedom'.
1915
Engraving
18th century
[Universal glory] would be a kind of monarchy with which self-esteem is ill at ease.
1733
Be resolved to serve no more, and you are at once free. [...] Do not support him any longer, and you will see him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
c. 1552-1553
He manifested, when He willed, His divine power [...] because He wished to serve as an example for our weakness.
1263-1264
[The most sterile of undertakings is] that of the philosophers [...] who have claimed to find the marvelous secret of producing an artificial happiness, a reasoned and reflected pleasure.
1742
Limestone male figure in Egyptian dress
mid-6th century BCE
The cause of the pleasure felt by those who commit outrages is their belief that they are gaining a further advantage over those they harm.
329-323 BC
Where the foundations of liberty are sufficiently solid, the [rulers] themselves place their glory in protecting it.
1677
I will work [...] as if they all belonged to me; and you can count on me not to waste a single obol of their patrimony.
1741-1784
From peace emanate the speculations of the great Sages and the actions of the great kings; non-intervention brings fame; abstraction raises one above all.
4th century BC
Spearhead
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Pleasure and Pain are two Ideas, one or the other of which is joined to almost all our Ideas, both those that come to us by sensation and those that we receive by reflection.
1689
The first need of the soul [...] is order, that is to say a fabric of social relations such that no one is forced to violate rigorous obligations in order to carry out other obligations.
1943
The seer knows the signs of what will come to pass, [...] but whether it is better for us that this should happen or not is for another to judge.
c. 380 BC
Rhythm is the soul of music.
1746
Head of the Virgin
1636