“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.”

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.

The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.

He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.

There is a world of created beings – living things, animals, entelechies, and souls – in the least part of matter…. Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.

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.

For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another.

I don’t say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese.

Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality.

There is nothing without reason.

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.

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

In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Drop perfectionism, develop persistence.

In Hinduism, conscience, reason and independent thinking have no scope for development.

When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.

The person who can laugh with life has developed deep roots with confidence and faith-faith in oneself, in people and in the world, as contrasted to negative ideas with distrust and discouragement.

Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group.

Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.