Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZWhence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.
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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.
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There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.
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Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
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Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
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Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
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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.
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For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.
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It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.
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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
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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.
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There is nothing without reason.
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To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.
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And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
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Nature does not make leaps.
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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.
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Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
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I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.
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A great doctor kills more people than a great general.
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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.
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Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China?
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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.
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I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
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Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.
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The words ‘Here you can find perfect peace’ can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
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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