“Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.”

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.

Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.

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.

Sadly, there are more wild horses in holding pens than in the wild.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.

I had the best buffalo horse that ever made a track.

Education isn’t everything, for a start it isn’t an elephant.

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?

I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. And it was good. Go ahead and laugh. I think the most important thing I learned was: Never let go of the girl’s leg, no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.

If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.