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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

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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Future Present Simplicity State Substance
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Adaption Connection Creation Expression Mirror Simplicity Substance Universe
Nature does not make leaps.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Leap Nature
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

Animal Garden Humor Plants Portion
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
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Count Exercise Hide Music
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Delight Happiness Love Oneself
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Excellence Lose Machine Man Slave
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
There is nothing without reason.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Life One Liner Philosophy Reason
God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Development Form God Order Small
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Action Estimate Greatness Life Ourselves Time
Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Music Secret Soul Unconscious Yourself
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
I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Experience Fact Genuine Hold Mark Nature Teaching
There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Beginning Form Simplicity Substance
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Infinity Judgment Machine Past Present Time
The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Expression Future Near Past Present Reading
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
Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Exception God Independent Substance World
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Demand Existence Possible
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Certain Establishment Goodness Order Progress
Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Charity Justice Wisdom
Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Arithmetic Music Unconscious
Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Happiness Hold Myself Sweet True
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

God Himself Relation Subject Work
He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Bitter Earn Sweet Taste

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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