“The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect.”

Source: The Practice of the Presence of God

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 108

Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of cases equally possible, that is to say, to such as we may be equally undecided about in regard to their existence, and in determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose probability is sought.<!--p.6

1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
Context: Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 264.