It is one of my great maxims that it is good to seek demonstrations of the axioms themselves.
1704
One must not believe, therefore, that the universal Being [...] values a man more than an ant, a lion more than a stone.
17th century
One must kill the passions.
1888
As for those who understand the language of birds [...] rather than their own reason, I maintain that it is better to listen to them than to believe them.
1580
Needle
3900 BCE - 100 CE
One part of this quantity of labor is embodied in a value for which an equivalent has been paid in the form of wages; another part, in a value for which no equivalent has been given.
1865
In artificial education, [...] teachings and readings stuff the head with notions, before the existence of any serious contact with the visible world.
1909
Any pain is acceptable in clarity.
1942
Consciousness [...] only fills the space that instinct leaves free.
1893
Bronze strainer
5th century BCE
After the first-order necessities, food and clothing, liberty is the first and most imperious need of human nature.
1869
Solitude is to the mind what diet is to the body: deadly when it is too long, although necessary.
1746
Seek out public scenes; be observers in the streets, in the gardens, in the markets, in the houses, and there you will get true ideas of the real movement in the actions of life.
1766
It was not a happy omen [...] to enter Rome in the midst of such carnage [...]: until then he had been despised as a weak old man; but then he appeared to everyone as a formidable emperor.
100-120 AD
Jacques-Louis Leblanc (1774–1846)
1823
[...] if we consider the objects of the senses [...] as mere phenomena, we thereby acknowledge that a thing in itself underlies them, although we do not know what it is [...].
1783
The case [...] remains the same, and nothing can change it; but the storm has passed, the hatred has subsided.
66 BC
[I wanted] to show the uncertainty of all our judgments on the characters of men, and [...] that customs, fashion, and laws are what primarily determine matters of morality.
1751
It is ridiculous to say: 'Advise me.' What you should say is this: 'Make my soul conform to everything that happens to it.'
c. 108 AD
Buckle with lion and boar
1st–3rd century CE
The complete freedom enjoyed by commerce will soon proportion production to consumption, and will set everything at the price it ought to have.
1776
One can digest anything, except contempt.
1764
In aristocracy, the master and the servant become assimilated [...]; whereas in democracies, where they are almost alike, they always remain strangers to one another.
1835-1840
whenever a proposition is inconceivable, one must suspend judgment [...], but examine its contrary; and if one finds the contrary to be manifestly false, one can boldly affirm the first, however incomprehensible it may be.
circa 1658
Bronze statuette of a goddess
ca. 3rd–1st century BCE
We exist only because we feel; we would not exist if we did not feel.
1817
It is a common notion to every man who uses his reason rather than his senses, that nothing can be annihilated by the ordinary forces of nature.
1674-1675
All armed prophets have been successful, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed.
1855
I am on a continuous journey.
1643-1649
Marble torso of a seated man
1st or 2nd century CE
Power does not last, and happiness does not consist, as [...] politicians would have us believe, in that.
4th century BC
[...] making oneself the sole cherished object of the Supreme Being is a much more powerful pride than that which aspires only to be cherished and admired by present and future men. Christian pride hides itself; it has the appearance of its opposite.
1841
True tolerance and freedom of thought are the true antidotes to religious fanaticism.
1766
There are those who everywhere mix in [...] the political reflections in which they delight, [...] interrupting the thread of the narrative at every turn.
1623
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ
1370–88
Woman, even in extreme civilization, is always much more natural than man, much closer to life, more physical, in a word.
1926
Personal interest is [...] the sole judge of men's merit.
1758
Those who claim that the universe is a uniform whole [...] must necessarily regard generation as a simple alteration.
c. 350 B.C.E.
[An institution] serves [...] to protect the Sovereign against the Government, [...] to uphold the Government against the People, [...] and to maintain the balance on all sides.
1762
Faience statuette of Aphrodite
334–30 BCE
If each body, taken in isolation [...], is largely a being of convention, how could the same not be true of the movement considered to affect that body in isolation?
1922
I would rather die than slavishly beg for my life and be granted an existence far more dreadful than death.
4th century BC
He who leads from good to evil is a bad seducer; he who brings back from evil to good is a good seducer.
1263-1264
I am so bad a flatterer, that I am never more at ease than when I can freely give my opinion on the things that pass before our eyes.
1574
Marble head of a youth
4th century BCE
It is perhaps no less difficult to define than it is rare to possess a gift of this nature [the fiery spirit].
1636
The ideas of relation, such as that of 'father', are often clearer and more distinct than the ideas of the substances to which they belong, such as that of 'man'.
1689
May this philosophy [...] see good only in what is honorable, [...] the one whose price consists in being unable to be sold at any price.
63-64 AD
Sight resembles touch: it operates in the light by transporting itself, so to speak, to the object, without the medium experiencing any affection.
c. 253-270 AD
Bronze youth
late 5th century BCE