18th Century Quotes

“To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“As I walked over the loose fragments of stone, which lay scattered and surveyed the sublimity and grandeur of the ruins, I recurred, by a natural association of ideas, to the times when these walls stood proudly in their original splendor, when the halls were the scenes of hospitality and festive magnificence, and when they resounded with the voices of those whom death had long since swept from earth. "Thus," said I, "shall the present generation - he who now sink in misery - and he who now swim in pleasure, alike pass away and be forgotten.”
― Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance

“I think it evidently appears, that there is no science, office, or dignity, which Women have not an equal right to share in with the Men: Since there can be no superiority, but that of brutal strength, shewn in the latter, to entitle them to engross all power and prerogative to themselves: nor any incapacity proved in the former, to disqualify them of their right, but what is owing to the unjust oppression of the Men, and might be easily removed.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This remoteness meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also allowed the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.”
― Terry Eagleton

“The way to Heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“We must be at least as well qualified as [Men] to teach the sciences; and if we are not seen in university chairs, it cannot be attributed to our want of capacity to fill them, but to that violence with which the Men support their unjust intrusion into our places.
(...) If then we set custom and prejudice aside, where wou'd the oddity be to see us dictating sciences from a university chair; since to name but one of a thousand, that foreign young lady, whose extraordinary merit and capacity but a few years ago forced a university in Italy to break through the rules of partiality, custom, and prejudice, in her favour, to confer on her a DOCTOR'S DEGREE, is a living proof that we are as capable, as any of the Men, of the highest eminences in the sphere of learning, if we had justice done us.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“What I wanted to tell you about Philidor was that Diderot wrote him a letter. You know Diderot?"
"The French Revolution?"
"Yeah. Philidor was doing blindfold exhibitions and burning out his brain, or whatever it was they thought you did in the eighteenth century. Diderot wrote him: 'It is foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity's sake.' I think of that sometimes when I'm analyzing my ass over a chessboard.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“History is philosophy teaching by examples.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“And the differences thence arising [between the constitution of men and women] are no ways sufficient to argue more natural strength in the one than in the other, to qualify them more for military labours. Are not the Women of different degrees of strength, like the Men? Are there not strong and weak of both sexes? Men educated in sloth and softness are weaker than Women; and Women, become harden'd by necessity, are often more robust than Men. (...) Woman may be enured to all the hardships of a campaign, and to meet all the terrors of it, as well as the bravest of the opposite sex.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“Bare strength entitles the Men to no superiority above us”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“I wou'd therefore exhort all my sex (...) to betake themselves to the improvement of their minds (...) and (...) shew our selves worthy something from them, as much above their bare esteem, as they conceit themselves above us. In a word, let us shew them, by what little we do without aid of education, the much we might do if they did us justice; that we may force a blush from them, if possible, and compel them to confess their own baseness to us, and that the worst of us deserve much better treatment than the best of us receive.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“Milk was used in various forms during the summer months; in winter beer or water was used. Bread, cakes, potatoes, and sea food were the principal foods. Animal flesh was not used commonly due to the inconvenience of storing. Turf was the common fuel.”
― William Petty

“Who were the men who did this?" Guido demanded suddenly.
Tonio was putting on his cloack. He looked up as if already in deep thought.
"Fools," he answered, "at the command of a coward."

page 139”
― Anne Rice, Cry to Heaven

“Were we [Women] to express our conceptions of God, it wou'd never enter into the head of any one of us to describe him as a venerable old man.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“The manner Women are bred in, (...) they are admitted to no share of the exercises which wou'd qualify them to attack or defend. They see themselves helplessly exposed to the outrages of a sex enslaved to the most brutal transports; and find themselves victims of contempt to wretches, whose prevalent strength is often exerted against them, with more fury and cruelty than beasts practise towards one another. Can our fear then be imputed to want of courage? Is it a defect? Or ought it not rather to be alledged as a proof of our sense: Since it wou'd be rather fool-hardiness than courage to withstand brutes, who want the sense to be overcome by reason, and whom we want vigour to repel by force of arms?”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband before you come back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three and twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three and twenty!”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“L'uomo è nato libero e ovunque si trova in catene”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique

“To fear God is to love Him so that His frown is your greatest dread, and His smile is your greatest delight.”
― John Brown

“why it shou'd create more surprise, to see [a lady] preside in a council of war, than in a council of state. Why may she not be as capable of heading an army as a parliament; or of commanding at sea as of reigning at land? What shou'd hinder her from holding the helm of a fleet with the same safety and steadiness as that of a nation? And why may she not exercise her soldiers, draw up her troops in battle array, and divide her forces into battalions at land, squadrons at sea, &c. with the same pleasure she wou'd have in seeing or ordering it to be done? The military art has no mystery in it beyond others, which Women cannot attain to. A Woman is as capable as a Man of making herself, by means of a map, acquainted with the good and bad ways, the dangerous and safe passes, or the proper situations for encampment. And what shou'd hinder her from making herself mistress of all the strategems of war, of charging, retreating, surprising, laying ambushes, counterfeiting marches, feigning flights, giving false attacks, supporting real ones, animating the soldiery, and adding example to eloquence by being the first to mount a breach. Persuasion, heat, and example are the soul of victory: And Women can shew as much eloquence, intrepidity, and warmth, where their honour is at stake, as is requisite to attack or defend a town.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“It is quite idle (...) to insist so much on bodily strength, as a necessary qualification to military employments. And it is full as idle to imagine that Women are not naturally as capable of courage and resolution as the Men. We are indeed charged, without any exception, with being timorous, and incapable of defence; frighted at our own shadows; alarm'd at the cry of an infant, the bark of a dog, the whistling of the wind, or a tale of hob-goblins. But is this universally true? Are there not Men as void of courage as the most heartless of our sex? And yet it is known that the most timorous Women (...) often behave more courageously than the Men under pains, sickness, want, and the terrors of death itself.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“What has greatly help'd to confirm the Men in the prejudiced notion of Women's natural weakness, is the common manner of expression which this very vulgar error gave birth to. When they mean to stigmatise a Man with want of courage they call him effeminate, and when they would praise a Woman for her courage they call her manly. But as these, and such like expressions, are merely arbitrary and but a fulsome compliment which the Men pass on themselves, they establish no truth.”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“(...) It is far from being true that all Women want courage, strength, or conduct to lead an army to triumph; any more than it is that all Men are endow'd with them. There are many of our sex as intrepid as the Men (...)
Need I bring Amazons from Scythia to prove the courage of Women? Need I run to Italy for a Camilla to shew an instance of warlike courage? (...) other nations glory in their numberless stole of warlike Women. (...) But to pass over the many instances of warlike bravery in our sex, let it suffice to name a Boadicea, who made the most glorious stand against the Romans (...) and if her endeavours did not meet with the success of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Charles of Sweden, in his fortunate days, her courage and conduct were such, as render her worthy to be consider'd equal, if not superior, to them all, in bravery and wisdom (...)”
― Lady Sophia Fermor, Woman Not Inferior to Man

“Il n’est pas facile de changer son cœur, mais il est encore plus difficile de détourner le cours rapide et puissant des choses humaines ; c’est donc principalement sur nous que nous devons travailler, et la véritable grandeur se trouve dans ce travail. La pompe et les prospérités d’une fortune éclatante n’ont jamais élevé personne aux yeux de la vertu et de la vérité ; l’âme est grande par ses pensées et par ses propres sentiments, le reste lui est étranger ; cela seul est en son pouvoir. Mais lorsqu’il lui est refusé d’étendre au dehors son action, elle l’exerce en elle-même, d’une manière inconnue aux esprits faibles et légers, que l’action du corps seul occupe. Semblables à des somnambules qui parlent et qui marchent en dormant, ces derniers ne connaissent point cette suite impétueuse et féconde de pensées, qui forment un si vif sentiment dans le cœur des hommes profonds.”
― Vauvenargues, Œuvres posthumes et œuvres inédites de Vauvenargues

“An old lady went to visit her dentist. When it was her turn, she sat in the chair, lowered her underpants, and raised her legs. The dentist said, "Excuse me, but I'm not a gynecologist." "I know," said the old lady. "I want you to take my husband's teeth out”
― Various

“When I look at him, I see that there are people who are born with something that I cannot find the words for, something that means that others respect them and hold them in the highest esteem. I don’t know what it is—is it posture, is it a head held high, a penetrating gaze, a way of walking? Or maybe some spirit hovering around him? An angel who keeps him company? He has only to enter any space, be it the most decrepit shed or the holiest chamber, and all eyes turn to him at once, pleasure and appreciation on everyone’s face, although he has not yet done or said a thing.

...But I also fear falling into blind love, exaggerated and unhealthy, like that Heshel, who, if he could, would lie down like a dog at his feet.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

“...the idea that Smith can somehow be seen as representative of modern capitalism is a stretch. He was a man of his time, in the very particular society of oligarchic, 18th century Scotland. It was a world in which he thrived precisely by not fighting the status quo, but rather by making a proposal for harnessing greed, while keeping merchants in their social place and celebrating the ruling class of the time, and trying to envision a way in which it could play a part in a modernizing economy. In many ways, he got it right. While capitalism flourished in 18th century Scotland, the landed elite remained firmly in place and has managed to do so to this very day. In that aspect, Smith was quite visionary.”
― Jacob Soll, Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers

“It is difficult to recapture the apprehension, even paranoia, that gripped the nation's most sober leaders in these early years of the American political experiment. No one was confident that the new republican institutions would survive. There was no clear path to success, and no past record against which to compare the unfolding of events. The emergence of political parties was unexpected and troubling, even to those who helped bring them into being. Each side in the great political conflict tended to suspect the other of the most dangerous and evil motives. (...) The debates were so brutal, in fact, precisely because they were so profoundly ideological. What was at stake, many Americans believed, were not merely matters of war and peace but the very soul of the republic.”
― Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

“Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.”
― Angelica Kauffman

“Each thing called improvement seems blackened with crimes,
If it tears up one record of blissful old times.”
― Susanna Blamire