All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible.
In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it.
I cannot know anything of which there is and can be only one.
The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.
It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being.
I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.
At the lowest cognitive level, they are processes of experiencing, or, to speak more generally, processes of intuiting that grasp the object in the original.
It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself.
Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof.
The actuality of all of material Nature is therefore kept out of action and that of all corporeality along with it, including the actuality of my body, the body of the cognizing subject.
This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
In all three cases, and for most human beings, the problem of suffering poses no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account.
Something similar is still true of the courses followed by manifold intuitions which together make up the unity of one continuous consciousness of one and the same object.
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.
The primordial experiences that are transmitted through art and history are not to be grasped from the points of view of these forms of consciousness.
So it's clear from whence the history of philosophy is the inner movement of the course of spirit, that is, of absolute subjectivity, towards itself.
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
I maintain that today many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practice the dull craft of experimental psychology.
Out of the fullness of this presence of mind, disturbed by no ulterior motive, the artist who is released from all attachment must practice his art.
There is a continuum which starts with direct sensory observations and proceeds to enormously complex, indirect methods of observation.
Both state and church have as their object actions as well as convictions, the former insofar as they are based on the relations between man and nature, the latter insofar as they are based on the relations between nature and God.
What phenomenology wants, in all these investigations, is to establish what admits of being stated with the universal validity of theory.
Psychology, on the other hand, is science of psychic Nature and, therefore, of consciousness as Nature or as real event in the spatiotemporal world.
Pure thought is itself the divine existence; and conversely, the divine existence, in its immediate essence, is nothing else than pure thought.
A new fundamental science, pure phenomenology, has developed within philosophy: This is a science of a thoroughly new type and endless scope.
All philosophical disciplines are rooted in pure phenomenology, through whose development, and through it alone, they obtain their proper force.
According to Augustine and many of his successors, all men deserve eternal torture, but God in his infinite mercy saves a very few.
It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates.
So far as their own phenomenal content is concerned, they do not suffer in any way when believing in Objective actuality is put out of play.
Immanent and transcendent experience are nevertheless connected in a remarkable way: by a change in attitude, we can pass from the one to the other.
I may never have experienced a centaur, but by imagining one, I know that I can also imagine others that resemble this one and yet are different.
In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions.
Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it.
I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old.
And as every state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state, so that the present state of it is big with the future.
There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.
There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so long,with so little,we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things.
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.
If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Good works are links that form a chain of love.