Chaque homme porte la forme, entière de l'humaîne condition.
Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III
L'homme qui peut empreindre perpétuellement la pensée dans le fait est un homme de génie; mais l'homme qui a le plus de génie ne le déploie pas à tous les instants, il ressemblerait trop à Dieu.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.
“Every man has within himself the entire human condition”
Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III
Variant: Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
“Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.”
Bk. 7, ch. 1
Corinne (1807)
volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 405 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=422&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
(Closing paragraph of the book.)
The Descent of Man (1871)
Context: Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)
“Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.”
Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 2
As quoted in Sculpting in Time (1996), by Andrei Tarkovsky, p. 56
The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64.
Leviathan (1651)
Context: And because the condition of Man, (as hath been declared in the precedent Chapter) is a condition of Warre of every one against everyone; in which case every one is governed by his own Reason; and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has a Right to every thing; even to one anothers body.
“Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha.”
Author's Introduction, p. 15
Report to Greco (1965)
Context: Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.
