Baruch Spinoza
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.Collection: Silence
Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.Collection: Stronger
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.Collection: Believe
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.Collection: Wisdom
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Thinking
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.Collection: Inspirational
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 joyfullyCollection: Revenge
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.Collection: Men
Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.Collection: Philosophical
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.Collection: Love
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.Collection: Fighting
He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.Collection: Absurdity
Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.Collection: Life
Freedom is self-determination.Collection: Determination
Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.Collection: Grateful
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.Collection: Desire
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.Collection: Order
It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.Collection: Men
To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Communication
Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.Collection: Men
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.Collection: Truth
There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.Collection: No Fear
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.Collection: Real
Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Law
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.Collection: Practical Life
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.Collection: Intelligent
A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness.Collection: Men
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.Collection: Order
The things which ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Believe
Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action: that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.Collection: Nature
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.Collection: Real
Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.Collection: Pain
True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience.Collection: Men
Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest goodCollection: Men
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Mind
...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.Collection: Body
The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Spring
Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause.Collection: Love
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.Collection: Suffering
Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.Collection: Order
If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.Collection: Life