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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.

Gottfried Leibniz

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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Change Existence God Lying Necessary Reason Source Ultimate
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 LEIBNIZ

Author Infinite Nature Order Perfection
Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Act Man Perception Practice Theory
And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Collection Compound Simplicity Substance
God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Development Form God Order Small
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Habit Virtue Wisdom
To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Finding Happiness Love Pleasure
Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Complaint Philosophy Yourself
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Ideal Influence Simplicity
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Divine Finding Imagination Negative Spirit Unity
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Arithmetic Count Music Pleasure Unconscious
I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Convince Knowledge Quantity Record Wealth Writing
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Knowledge Man Time Understand Wisdom
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Count Exercise Hide Music
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Body Dreams Each Other Perfection Phenomena Soul Substance
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Advantage Diminish Greatness Observation Wonderful

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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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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Popular Authors

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