Democritus meditating on the seat of the soul (Démocrite méditant sur le siège de l'âme) is a statue by Léon-Alexandre Delhomme (1841–1895), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1868. It shows the Greek philosopher Democritus, his eyes fixed on a skull he holds in his hands. It is now exhibited in the garden of the musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
On its base is inscribed an extract from the 29th fable of La Fontaine:
- "Hippocrates in time arrived at the conclusion that he had not sought whether the heart or the head was the seat of either reason or sense in man and beast"
Famous quotes containing the words meditating, seat and/or soul:
“With meditating that she must die once,
I have the patience to endure it now.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,—for that is the seat of sympathy,—he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man’s, but it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)