Baruch Spinoza

"The mind has the greater power to understand the more it is united with the body."

"All things follow from God's nature with the same necessity as it follows from the nature of a triangle that its angles are equal to two right angles."

"The endeavor to preserve oneself is the primary and sole foundation of virtue."

"He who lives according to reason is free in all circumstances."

"Anger is a kind of sorrow mixed with hate and vengeance."

"The highest activity of the mind is to think ideas of greater and lesser complexity."

"Joy is the transition of the mind to a state of greater perfection."

"To be free is to be determined by one's own nature alone."

"An idea of an idea is the idea of an idea of an idea."

"He who has a true understanding of things desires nothing else than to understand them."

"The human body is composed of a great number of parts of diverse nature, each requiring continual varied replenishment."

"I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."

"Fear cannot coexist with hope in the same moment; one must yield to the other."

"Men are conscious of their appetite and ignorant of the causes that determine them."

"The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God."

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

"The mind's power of thinking is equal to or greater than the body's power of acting."

"To be free is nothing else than to be preserved in one's being."

"Desire is the very essence of man insofar as it is determined to do anything by some cause external to itself."

"All things, insofar as they can be understood through God, are of infinite perfection."

"Passive emotions arise from inadequate ideas; active emotions arise from adequate ideas."

"He who knows himself adequate in every situation knows how to order his life justly."

"Joy is a transition to a state of greater perfection."

"The more hatred one feels toward the world, the more one fails to understand it."

"True virtue is to love those who despitefully use us."

"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue that springs from strength of character."

"Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary, it has a kind of power over the affects."

"Beauty is not a property of external things, but rather a perception of the mind."

"He who learns to understand everything is patient with all things."

"The imagination is more powerful than knowledge, for it encompasses the entire world."