“But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.”

God’s relation to spirits is not like that of a craftsman to his work, but also like that of a prince to his subjects.

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.

There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts.

Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.

I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

The present is great with the future.

I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.

It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.

Those little paws gifted me the galaxy of a sweet home.

Don’t let anyone tame the wild horses that stampede inside your heart.

But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.

I dread shooting with animals. I hope I never get a script with snakes.