“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“No reason compels me to maintain that the body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“The superstitious, who know how to reprove vices rather than how to teach virtues, and who strive, not to lead people by reason, but to restrain them by fear in such a way that they flee what is bad rather than love the virtues, simply intend all other people to be as miserable as they are, and so it is not surprising that they are for the most part irksome and hateful to human beings.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Most errors consist only in our not rightly applying names to things. For when someone says that the lines which are drawn from the center of a circle to its circumference are unequal, he surely understands (then at least) by a circle something different from what mathematicians understand. Similarly, when men err in calculating they have certain numbers in their mind and different ones on the paper. So if you consider what they have in mind, they really do not err, though they seem to err because we think they have in their mind the numbers which are on the paper. If this were not so, we would not believe that they were erring, just as I did not believe that he was erring whom I recently heard cry out that his courtyard had flown into his neighbor's hen, because what he had in mind seemed sufficiently clear to me.
And most controversies have arisen from this, that men do not rightly explain their own mind, or interpret the mind of the other man badly. For really, when they contradict one another most vehemently, they either have the same thoughts, or they are thinking of different things, so that what they think are errors and absurdities in the other are not.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“The order and connection of ideas in the same as the order and connection of things”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Les stoïciens ont voulu soutenir que nos passions dépendent entièrement de notre volonté, et que nous pouvons les gouverner avec une autorité sans bornes; mais l'expérience les a contraint d'avouer, en dépit de leurs principes, qu'il ne faut pas peu de soins et d'habitude pour contenir et régler nos passions .”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“For though men be ignorant, yet they are men”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Superstitious persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves. Wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow man.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice here. If any others of a similar character remain, they can easily be rectified with a little thought by anyone.”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
“Nu râde, nu jeli, nu urî, ci înțelege!”
― Baruch Spinoza, quote from Ethics
Baruch Spinoza
Born place: in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Born date November 24, 1632
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“Amateur psychiatric prognosis can be fascinating when there is absolutely nothing else to do.”
― Richard Condon, quote from The Manchurian Candidate
“Even in your death you'd win, Nixon." He paused. "Because you fought, and regardless of the outcome, your success was in the journey." ~ Phoenix De Lange, Elect by Rachel Van Dyken”
― Rachel Van Dyken, quote from Elect
“She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Welcome back, Ben,” Erica said. I started in surprise before realizing the voice was coming from inside my head. Alexander had slipped a two-way radio into my ear. There were lots of people out and about. The enemy had taken my cell phone, but I put my hand to my ear and pretended to be talking on one anyhow. No one gave me a second glance. Virtually everyone else was on a cell phone themselves. “Can you hear me?” I asked. “Loud and clear,” Erica replied. “Where are you?” “Still on campus, looking into things. But I need you to tail someone for me.” “Chip?” “No. I think he’s clean.” “What? But—” “I’ll explain later. Right now I need you to go after Tina. She’s the mole . . . and she’s on the move.”
― Stuart Gibbs, quote from Spy School
“It felt as if Gemma had moved up to a higher, more complex level of human emotions that Lyn couldn’t even hope to understand. She didn’t know the rules. She didn’t know the right thing to say to make it better. It was like Gemma possessed a secret, terrible knowledge that Lyn could only clumsily guess at.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from Three Wishes
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