Quotes By Nicolas Malebranche

You cannot of yourself move your arm or alter your position, situation, posture, do to other men good or evil, or effect the least change in the world.

In this connection, faith and experience teach us many truths by means of the short-cut of authority and by the proofs of very pleasant and agreeable feelings.

All creatures are united to God alone in an immediate union. They depend essentially and directly upon Him. Being all alike equally impotent, they cannot be in reciprocal dependence upon one another.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

You find yourself in the world, without any power, immovable as a rock, stupid, so to speak, as a log of wood.

God joins us together by means of the body, in consequence of the laws of the communication of movements. He affects us with the same feelings in consequence of the laws of the conjunction of body and soul.

Do not fear lest you should meditate too much upon Him and speak of Him in an unworthy way, providing you are led by faith. Do not fear lest you should entertain false opinions of Him so long as they are in conformity with the notion of the infinitely perfect Being.

I beg of you always to dwell upon the necessity of a thorough understanding of principles, in order to stop the vivacity of his mind, and please do not forget to meditate upon the subject of our discussion.

I love good and pleasure, I hate evil and pain, I want to be happy and I am not mistaken in believing, that people, angels and even demons have those same inclinations.

As our bodies live upon the earth and find sustenance in the fruits which it produces, so our minds feed on the same truths as the intelligible and immutable substance of the divine Word contains.

Our soul is not united to our body in the ordinary sense of these terms. It is immediately and directly united to God alone.

We see things in this material world, wherein our bodies dwell, only because our mind through its attention lives in another world, only because it contemplates the beauties of the archetypal and intelligible world which Reason contains.

Prejudices are not easily got rid of as an old coat which is no longer thought of.

God transforms, so to speak, this air into words, into various sounds. He makes you understand these various sounds through the modifications by which you are affected.

You will not dishonor the divine perfections by judgments unworthy of them, provided you never judge of Him by yourself, provided you do not ascribe to the Creator the imperfections and limitations of created beings.

He has willed - He wills incessantly - that the modifications of the mind and those of the body shall be reciprocal. This is the conjunction and the natural dependence of the two parts of which we are constituted.