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"It is not skepticism for its own sake, Father. Simply an awareness that we are prone to error, and that it is difficult to view anything impartially."

"That is fine when you are talking about comets."

"I'll not discuss religion, then. Good-bye, Father."

"God be with you, Daniel."

"When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe—for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient."

"Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was."

Waterhouse: "Now, if you--the ingenious Dr. Leibniz--contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking--is that really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?"

Leibniz: "You could as well have asked: are we thinking? Or merely reflecting God's genius?"

Waterhouse: "If we are mere mechanisms, obeying rules laid down by God, then all of our actions are predestined, and we are not really thinking."

Leibniz: "This is one of the two great labryrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it--which must have been a great spiritual struggle--and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination."

Funny that I should become such a great believer in justice. I always used to open my history courses by telling the students that if they expected to hear a series of movie scenarios, with the good guys winning in the end, they might as well all go home because not only didn’t the good guys win, but there weren’t any good guys.

Love is not an excuse for bad taste.

Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne.

What can I tell you, Laura? That I confused justice and revenge? People do that a great deal, and they always have.

Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.

Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.

The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.

In the end one needs forbearance to get by in this world.