“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.”

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.

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 world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another’s happiness as one’s own.

No hatred is so bitter as that of near relations.

For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

The idea of exploring character relations and their development over a decade has to be appealing for any actor who cherishes his craft.

Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach man his proper relation to the environment where he must live.

The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains. When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition, they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of all their worldly affairs. Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.