“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces”

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: We produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: The one absolutely, the Intelligible, the ever Preexisting, comprehending all the universe together within the One — nay, more, is not the whole world One living thing — all and everywhere full of life and soul, perfect and made up out of parts likewise perfect? Now of this double unity the most perfect part (I mean of the Unity in the Intelligible World that comprehends all things in One, and of the Unity encompassing the Sensible World, that brings together all things into a single and perfect nature) is the perfection of the sovereign Sun, which is central and single, and placed in the middle of the intermediate Powers. <!-- But coming after this, there exists a certain connection in the Intelligible World with the Power that orders and arranges all things in one. Does not the essence of the Fifth Body, which is turned, as it were by a lathe, in a circle, move around the heavens, and is that which holds together all the parts, and binds them to one another, uniting what is naturally united amongst them and also those parts that mutually affect each other. These two essences, which are the causes of mutual attraction and of union (whereof the one manifests itself in the Intelligible, the other in the Sensible creation) does the Sun thus concentrate into one. Of the former he imitates this power of embracing and containing all things in the Intelligible creation, inasmuch as he proceeds from that source; whilst he governs the latter, that which is perceptible in the world of Sense. Perhaps, therefore, the self-existent principle, which existed first in the Intelligible creation, and lastly in the Visible bodies of the heavens, is owner of the intermediate, self-created essence of the sovereign Sun, from which primal creative essence there descends upon the visible world the radiance which illuminates the universe.

Kosmos (1845 - 1847)
Context: The principal impulse by which I was directed was the earnest endeavor to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces. My intercourse with highly-gifted men early led me to discover that, without an earnest striving to attain to a knowledge of special branches of study, all attempts to give a grand and general view of the universe would be nothing more than a vain illusion. These special departments in the great domain of natural science are, moreover, capable of being reciprocally fructified by means of the appropriative forces by which they are endowed.

Source: Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Source: The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 1 : Ideology As Material Power, Section 1 : The Divergence Of Ideology And Economic Situation
Context: Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development. To be radical, according to Marx, means "going to the root of things." If one goes to the root of things, if one understands their contradictory character, the means of mastering the reaction become plain.

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

Variant: The true thoughts that go on inside us are just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of, at most, one tiny little part of us at any given instant.
Source: Oblivion

Philip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2006).

As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
Variant translations:
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)