
Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)
Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.
La monadologie (53 & 54).
The Monadology (1714)
“God's will is the very perfection of all reason.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 283.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterward we may love Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage
Axiomata (1921). Quoted in Witemeyer, Hugh (1951), The Poetry of Ezra Pound, University of California Press, p. 26
Scan of the original page http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/007/0900/0961.jpg at The Library of Congress.
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Context: Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.