Quotes By Baruch Spinoza

All noble things are as difficult as they are rare.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Desire is the very essence of man.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

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.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Desire is the essence of a man.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.