“Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.”

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

It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.

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.

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

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.

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

The words ‘Here you can find perfect peace’ can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.

For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.

To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

People of substance may sin without being exposed for their stolen pleasure; but servants and the poorer sort of women have seldom an opportunity of concealing a big belly, or at least the consequences of it.

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

It is like the ant who suddenly finds food and walks back to the anthill while sending out material called food attracting substance.

God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.

For nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.

The being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.