Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
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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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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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There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.
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He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.
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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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The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.
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Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.
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In the mind there is no absolute or free will.
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.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.
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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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Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
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. . . to know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind.
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The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.
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The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.
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He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.
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Everyone has as much right as he has might.
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A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
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Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.
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Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.
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Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.
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All is One (Nature, God).
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Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.