Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
truth, in morals, has ever appeared to me the essence of the sublime; and, in taste, simplicity the only criterion of the beautiful.
Read & copy the quotation
“truth, in morals, has ever appeared to me the essence of the sublime; and, in taste, simplicity the only criterion of the beautiful.”

Mary Wollstonecraft

Download image (JPG)

Source
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Date
1790
Meaning

Meaning of “truth, in morals, has ever appeared to me…”

Wollstonecraft makes moral truth and aesthetic simplicity standards of seriousness, rejecting ornate politeness when it conceals what a writer actually believes.

Source context

Where does it come from?

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke, second edition (1790); this sentence follows Wollstonecraft’s refusal to disguise her sentiments behind courtly politeness.

Primary / edition source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

ArtBeautifulCreativityDeepHonestyIntegrityMindPhilosophySimplicityThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthWriting
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
We shall never learn the affinities of beauty
Read & copy

“We shall never learn the affinities of beauty”

Robert Louis Stevenson · Essays in the Art of Writing · 1905
Meaning & context

Stevenson treats beauty as deeper than any complete technical explanation, warning that analysis of artistic mechanism does not exhaust why form can move or delight.

Source details

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature,” represented by the 1905 Chatto & Windus edition in Project Gutenberg #492. The collection is posthumous; the excerpt concerns literary aesthetics.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
Read & copy

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”

Walter Pater · The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873
Meaning & context

Pater uses music as his model for the closest possible union of form and content, a critical claim about artistic structure rather than a literal hierarchy of media.

Source details

The Renaissance, “The School of Giorgione”; Project Gutenberg #2398. The surrounding paragraph explains that other arts strive to reduce the separation between matter and form.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
We, however, want to be the poets of our life, and first of all in the smallest and most commonplace matters.
Read & copy

“We, however, want to be the poets of our life, and first of all in the smallest and most commonplace matters.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · The Joyful Wisdom · 1910
Meaning & context

The line extends artistic perception into ordinary conduct, suggesting that a life can be shaped through attention to small, repeated choices rather than only dramatic acts.

Source details

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 299; Thomas Common translation in the represented 1910 English edition.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Read & copy

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

Francis Bacon · Of Truth · 1625
Meaning & context

Bacon joins truth with charity and steadiness, presenting intellectual honesty as part of a well-ordered mind rather than a weapon for pride.

Source details

Francis Bacon, 'Of Truth,' essay I in the 1625 Essays; independently checked against the validated 1884 Works of Francis Bacon, Volume I scan leaf 139. The retained sentence closes Bacon's theological/philosophical truth discussion by linking charity, providence and truth; it is explicitly early-modern Christian-philosophical rhetoric, not clinical or scientific evidence.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.
Image design Rose Studio
Read & copy

“And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.”

Plato · Phaedo · 4th century BCE
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Meaning & context

Facing death, Socrates asks his friends to challenge the argument he is defending if they find it mistaken. His emphasis is on testing whether a claim is true rather than accepting it because of the speaker’s reputation, even when that speaker is himself. The appeal belongs to a debate, not a universal guarantee that his view of the soul is correct.

Source details

Phaedo, approximately Stephanus 91b–c, Socrates speaking to Simmias and Cebes after their objections to the arguments about the soul’s survival. He specifically asks them to contradict him if they think his reasoning is wrong. This is a complete sentence from Benjamin Jowett’s English translation, Project Gutenberg #1658, in the dialogue after the translator’s separate introduction. Socrates is a character and local speaker; do not attribute the sentence as a direct personal remark by Plato.

↓ Download image (SVG)