Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Sadness diminishes a man's powers.
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In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.
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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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The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, ... but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.
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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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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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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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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.
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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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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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Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
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I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.
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Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
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Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
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Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
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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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What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
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God and all attributes of God are eternal.
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Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.
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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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I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.
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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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Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.