Moses Mendelssohn Quotations

For a game it is too serious, for seriousness too much of a game.

The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight

You know how much I am inclined to explain all disputes among philosophical schools as merely verbal disputes or at least to derive them originally from verbal disputes

A God is thinkable, therefore a God is also actually present

I am, therefore there is a God.

We consider the beauty of nature and art with pleasure and satisfaction, without the slightest movement of desire. Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it

My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths

Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence

Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood.

Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed.