metaphysics quotes

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Being is the great explainer.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.