Baruch Spinoza quotes - page 8

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws. (Baruch Spinoza)
I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
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. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, is to understand things by intuition. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen, and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
It was not until the Twelfth Century of our era that the Pentateuch as a whole was subjected to rational scrutiny. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Indwelling in every dewdrop as in the innumerable host of heaven, in the humblest flower and in the mind of man, he found the living spirit of God, setting forth the Divine glory, making the Divine perfection and inspiring with the Divine love. (Baruch Spinoza)
A definition, if it is to be called perfect, must explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not to substitute for this any of its properties. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Bruno and Spinoza are to be entirely excepted. Each stands by himself and alone. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Never does Spinoza cite Bruno by name. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
God's will is eternal, and has never been indifferent; hence... the world is a necessary effect of the divine nature. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! (Baruch Spinoza)
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Bruno's ideas were widely imparted, borrowed, sounded ; almost never, though, with the name Giordano Bruno attached to them. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
Perfection and imperfection are names which do not differ much from the names beauty and ugliness. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing, &c., can be ascribed to God, or that they exist in him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is ; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished ; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped. View quote
Baruch Spinoza
For they conceive of men, not as they are, but as they themselves would like them to be. View quote
Baruch Spinoza