“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.”

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.

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

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind’s labour.

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

It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.

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.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.

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.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.

Sometimes I have to pause to make the distinction between Ben the teenager and Ben the businessman.

Who is to say what is real and what is not?’Real’ is a distinction of a naïve mind.

For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it.

Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.