Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
11 quotes
"Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility."
"The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men..."
"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."
"The order and connection of ideas in the same as the order and connection of things"
"The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body"
"For though men be ignorant, yet they are men"
"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."
"Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition"
"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."
"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."
"Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself."