Variant translation: Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, because things came first, and their names subsequently.
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Source: As quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, p. 92
“There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour.”
Book II, Ch. 16
Essais (1595), Book II
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Michel De Montaigne 264
(1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, … 1533–1592Related quotes
The libretto of an 18th-century oratorio by Joseph Haydn states in praise of Jehovah. Source: The Watchtower magazine, article: Praise the King of Eternity!, 4/1, 1996.
Original in German: Du weißt daß ich über die Sache selbst nicht deiner Meinung bin. Daß mir Spinozismus und Atheismus zweyerlei ist. Daß ich den Spinoza wenn ich ihn lese mir nur aus sich selbst erklären kann, und daß ich, ohne seine Vorstellungsart von Natur selbst zu haben, doch wenn die Rede wäre ein Buch anzugeben, das unter allen die ich kenne, am meisten mit der meinigen übereinkommt, die Ethik nennen müsste.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1785
G - L, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reported in Benjamin H. Hill, Jr., Senator Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia; His Life, Speeches and Writings (1893), epigraph, p. 594. From "Notes on the Situation", a series of articles appearing in the Chronicle and Sentinel, Atlanta, Georgia.
“Where a man calls himself by a name which is not his name, he is telling a falsehood.”
Reddaway v. Banham (1895), L. R. 2 Q. B. D. [1895], p. 293.
Explaining his symbol of the within the human heart, in Libri Apologetici (1730), Book I, as quoted in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) by Manly P. Hall, "The Human Body in Symbolism" http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta17.htm
Context: We men have one book in common which points to God. Each has it within himself, which is the priceless Name of God. Its letters are the flames of His love, which He out of His heart in the priceless Name of Jesus has revealed in us. Read these letters in your hearts and spirits and you have books enough. All the writings of the children of God direct you unto that one book, for therein lie all the treasures of wisdom. … This book is Christ in you.
In John Allen, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ioannis Calvini Institutio Christianae religionis http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC06656346&id=ONsOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=calvin+%22devoted+from+the+womb%22&as_brr=1#PRA1-PA169,M1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841), p.169.