311 Quotes by Baruch Spinoza

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.

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 highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

For though men be ignorant, yet they are men

Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium).

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.

Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

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.