“All things in God are spontaneous.”

I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one.

There is a world of created beings – living things, animals, entelechies, and souls – in the least part of matter. Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.

There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding.

In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.

When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

Now this connection or adaption of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.

One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.

Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.

Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.

There is nothing without a reason.

Man makes the mistake of separating himself from God and identifying himself with the body.

The attempt is to kill the false “I”, so that the real “I”, the Lord, will reign. “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” say the Hebrew scriptures.

God made food; the devil the cooks.

For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven.

God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.

Well, the good Lord and good luck must have been with me because I did exactly what I said I was going to do.

No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small according to God’s good pleasure; but let this be your conclusion and let it so be thought, that – as is the perfect truth – it was the gift of God.

The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.