Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse...we should strive to keep worry from our life.
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I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.
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Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
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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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I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.
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A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
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A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
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The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.
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He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
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Whatsoever is, is in God.
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I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
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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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We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
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How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
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Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.
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He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfullyHe who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully.
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He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.
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Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
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Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.
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Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
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The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
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I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
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Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
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Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.