31 Quotes by Nicolas Malebranche

I derive nothing whatever from my own nature, nothing from the nature imagined by the philosophers - all comes from God and His decrees.

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

One should assiduously pursue perfection without ever claiming to attain it.

I do not believe there is anything useful which men can know with exactitude that they cannot know by arithmetic and algebra.

Imagination is the mad boarder.

We can always make ourselves liked provided we act likable, but we cannot always make ourselves esteemed, no matter what our merits are.

I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul.

I am not my own light unto myself.

When I touch a human hand, I touch heaven.