Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action.

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it.

He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.