Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole,….I say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the Spirit who 'works all in all', and 'by whom all things consist.'" George Berkeley (1685-1745), 'The Principles of Human Knowledge'

2		"Providence connects each one with its proper order." Boethius, quoted by Thomas Aquinas

3		"The ultimate measure of justice in all human institutions and acts, as well as in the characters of men, is not itself a man-made standard, but rather a natural principle of justice, holding for all men at all times everywhere."

4		"Charity, according to its very nature, causes peace; for love is a unitive force." Thomas Aquinas

5		"The ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by the truth, when they asserted an infinite principle, asserted likewise that there was only one such principle." Thomas Aquinas

6		"The good of nothing less than the whole collectively or of all distributively can be taken as the common or general good."

7		"As God is the supernatural efficient cause of all created things, so God is also the supernatural final cause – the end or ultimate good toward which all creatures tend." Baruch Spinoza

8		"Only God, only an infinite being, can satisfy man's infinite craving for all the good there is."

9		"Man dies in the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. Man, composite of soul and body, perishes as do all things which are subject to dissolution; but the soul itself, a simple spiritual substance, is immortal, living on after its union with the body is dissolved."

10		"Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps….The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present." Georg Hegel (1770-1831),

11		"The divine being is all being simultaneously." Thomas Aquinas

12		"In the view of Nicolas of Cusa, the mystery of God's infinity is best expressed by affirming that in God all contradictions are somehow reconciled."

13		"Man's nature as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures."

14		"The absolute good is, as in the 'Divine Comedy', the final cause or ultimate end of the motions of the universe. It is 'the Alpha and Omega', Dante says, 'of every scripture that Love reads to me.'"

15		"A natural teleology seems to imply that every natural thing is governed by an indwelling form working toward a definite end, and that the whole of nature exhibits the working out of a divine plan or design."

16		"The moral law is universally and equally binding on all persons….the moral law commands us to respect the dignity of the human person, ourselves and others alike,"

17		"Immortality is, in a way, enjoyed in this life, for it is a present participation in eternity through the mind's knowledge of God."

18		"All things partake of The One in absolute dependence."

19		"In the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One." Plotinus

20		"From self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestible as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out, to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences." John Locke (1629-1695)

21		"The ancients did not doubt that men could choose and, through choice, exercise some control over the disposition of their lives. Tacitus, for example…claims that 'the wisest of the ancients leave us the capacity of choosing our life."

22		"God is sovranly [sovereignly] present through all. We cannot think of something of God here and something else there,…there is an instantaneous presence everywhere….everything therefore [is] fully held by the divine." Plotinus

23		"Whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life." Socrates, quoted in Plato's 'Phaedo'

24		"Although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one." Thomas Aquinas

25		"Justice is esential to the very life and health of the soul."