I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZWe never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
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There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
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Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.
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This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
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To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
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Everything that is possible demands to exist.
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The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.
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Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
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Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
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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.
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We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.
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He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.
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Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.
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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.
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Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. Acta eruditorum
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And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
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The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.
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The past is pregnant with the present.
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Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.
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What is what must be.
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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.
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There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
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Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom.
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Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul.
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All things in God are spontaneous.
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He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
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