Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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.
We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.
...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
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.
The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.
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.
Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.
I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.
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.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.
In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.
I do not believe anyone has reached such perfection, surpassing all others, except Christ, to whom God immediately revealed - without words or visions - the conditions which lead to salvation.
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.
I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
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.
If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.
