“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.”

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.

The words ‘Here you can find perfect peace’ can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.

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

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.

Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.

To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.

It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.

What is is what must be.

Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom.

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.

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.

Nature does not make leaps.

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

All the religions are true, they just see a different part of the elephant.

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.

You’re not jesus. You don’t get a sacrificial lamb.

There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.

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.

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.

I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.