Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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The things which ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.
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The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.
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Sadness diminishes a man's powers.
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Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.
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After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
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It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.
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I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.
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All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.
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Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.
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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
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Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
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Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action.
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Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
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Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
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God and all attributes of God are eternal.
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Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
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What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
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Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
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The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.
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He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing.
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I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.