Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.
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Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.
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The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
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The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.
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Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
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He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
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If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result (i.e., power over the emotions by which the wise man surpasses the ignorant man) seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found.
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The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
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If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.
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Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.
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Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
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...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
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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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Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
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I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.
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Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
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The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
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Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.
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Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
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Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
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The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.
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The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.
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In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
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Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.