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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.

Gottfried Leibniz

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Divine Fine Imagination Spirit Wonderful
Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Fake Greatness Ground Judgement Principle Reason True
The larger the mass of collected things, the less will be their usefulness. Therefore, one should not only strive to assemble new goods from everywhere, but one must endeavor to put in the right order those that one already possesses.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Assemble Collection Goodness Mass Order Possession Right
The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Compound Simplicity Substance Talk
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Different Nature Possible Quality
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Evidence Hold Perfection Understand
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Dreams Enough Life Myself Physical Reason
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
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Attachment Happiness Open Problem Secret
Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Important Invention Myself Opinion See Source
Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Exception Finding Oneself Reality
We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Animal Destroy Mirror Soul Universe
I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Animal Known Large Ordinary Ourselves Ready System
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Ideal Influence Simplicity
In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Choice Creation God Perfection Phenomena Regular World
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Count Exercise Hide Music
God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Development Form God Order Small

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.

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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.

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