Term
| “In truth, the aim of an encyclopedia is to collect all knowledge that now lies scattered over the face of the earth, to make known its general structure to the men among whom we live, and to transmit it to those who will come after us, in order that the labors of past ages may be useful to the ages to come, that our grandsons, as they become better educated, may at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we may not die without having deserved well of the human race…” |
|
Definition
Author: Denis Diderot
Work: The Definition of an Encyclopedia
Year: 1751-1772
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “A thing that I consider intolerable is that one should lean upon some ancient writer’s authority in questions that require only the use of reason.” |
|
Definition
Author: Denis Diderot
Work: The Definition of an Encyclopedia
Year: 1751-1772
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “When the nation achieves its freedom it will remember with gratitude the patriotic writers of the first two orders who were the first to abjure archaic errors and who preferred the principles of universal justice to the murderous conspiracies of corporate interest against the interet of the nation.” |
|
Definition
Author: Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès
Work: What Is the Third Estate?
Year: 1789
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “The source of all sovereignty is essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms.” |
|
Definition
Author: Committee of the National Assembly
Work: Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
Year: 1789
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “But, in order to lay the foundations of democracy among us and to consolidate it, in order to arrive at the peaceful reign of constitutional laws, we must finish the war of liberty against tyranny and safely cross through the storms of the revolution:” |
|
Definition
Author: Maximilien Robespierre
Work: Report on the Principles of Political Morality
Year: 1794
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “And what did it matter that Brutus killed a tyrant? Tyranny still lived in every heart, and Rome existed only in Brutus.” |
|
Definition
Author: Maximillien Robespierre
Work: Report on the Principles of Political Morality
Year: 1794
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “It will be preceded by a large body of musicians, who will place themselves on the two flights of the staircase. / The president, speaking from the rostrum, will explain to the people the reasons determining this solemn festival, and invite it to honor the Author of Nature.” |
|
Definition
Author: Robespierre / Jacques-Louis David
Work: Festival of the Supreme Being
Year: 1794
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “For eighteen centuries, it served to date the progress of fanaticism, the degradation of nations, the scandalous triumph of pride, vice and stupidity, the persecutions and debasements endured by virtue, talent, and philosophy at the hands of cruel despots or in their names.” |
|
Definition
Author: Charles-Gilbert Romme
Work: The Revolutionary Calendar: Report on the Republican Era
Year: 1793
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. But liberty when men act in bodies, is power.” |
|
Definition
Author: Edmund Burke
Work: Reflections on the Revolutions in France
Year: 1790
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.” |
|
Definition
Author: Edmund Burke
Work: Reflections on the Revolutions in France
Year: 1790
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree – and from thence, by an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to their means.” |
|
Definition
Author: Edmund Burke
Work: Reflections on the Revolutions in France
Year: 1790
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “Bizarre, blind, bloated by science and degenerate, in this century of enlightenment and wisdom, he, in grossest ignorance, wishes to exercise the command of a despot over a sex that has received every intellectual faculty; he claims to rejoice in the Revolution and claims his rights to equality, at the very least.” |
|
Definition
Author: Marie-Olympe de Gouges
Work: Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens
Year: 1791
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “If my attempt thus to give my sex an honorable and just stability is now considered a paradox on my part, an attempt at the impossible, I must leave to men yet to come the glory of discussing this matter; but meanwhile, one can pave the way through national education, the restoration of morals, and by conjugal contracts.” |
|
Definition
Author: Marie-Olympe de Gouges
Work: Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens
Year: 1791
Language: French |
|
|
Term
| “One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when the ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Work: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Year: 1792
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “It would be just as rational to declare that the courtiers in France, when a destructive system of despotism had formed their character, were not men, because liberty, virtue, and humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure and vanity.---- Fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole race!” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Work: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Year: 1792
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “If he is inclined to think that his own approbation or disapprobation, annexed to the idea of an act, without any regard to its consequences, is a sufficient foundation for him to judge and act upon, let him ask himself whether his sentiment is to be a standard of right and wrong, with respect to every other man, or whether every man’s sentiment has the same privilege of being a standard to itself?” |
|
Definition
Author: Jeremy Bentham
Work: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Year: 1780
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Shelly
Work: Frankenstein
Year: 1817
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “You may remember, that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Shelly
Work: Frankenstein
Year: 1817
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Shelly
Work: Frankenstein
Year: 1817
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play, but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the harmony of the old man’s instrument or the songs of the birds; I since found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science of words or letters.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Shelly
Work: Frankenstein
Year: 1817
Language: English |
|
|
Term
| “All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea, and executed the creation of man.” |
|
Definition
Author: Mary Shelly
Work: Frankenstein
Year: 1817
Language: English |
|
|
