Baruch Spinoza

"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."

"The more we are determined by external causes, the more imperfect we are."

"Those who have a strong body have a strong mind capable of bearing what others cannot."

"Happiness consists in the power to preserve one's own being; unhappiness consists in diminishing that power."

"We feel joy when we come together to increase our collective power to exist."

"The human being consists of a very complex body, which requires a number of continually varied things."

"In proportion as the mind is stronger, it can better bridle the affects."

"All determination is negation; to define something is to say what it is not."

"Reason teaches us the things which are absolutely necessary for our salvation."

"The more each person strives to preserve his own being, the more virtue he has."

"Love and hatred are always accompanied by the idea of the object loved or hated."

"He who always desires and never rests in satisfaction will experience the continuous pain of lack."

"The mind is eternal insofar as it understands all things with eternal necessity."

"Everything which is determined to move is determined so by another external thing."

"To understand nature, one must think like nature itself."

"The highest good of the mind is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge."

"Ambition is often mistaken for virtue when it serves the greater good."

"The greatest fear of death comes from those who have not truly lived."

"Justice and injustice are not real properties but notions of imaginative thought."

"Men are most determined to do an action when they believe themselves free."

"To exist is to persist; to persist is to perfect oneself."

"The joy that comes from understanding is the highest form of pleasure."

"In so far as the mind understands all things as determined by necessity, it has a preventive influence on the affects."

"A powerful body and mind are not the privilege of the few but the birthright of all."

"The more we understand particular things in their relations to the whole, the closer we come to truth."

"To live in accordance with reason is to live in accordance with nature."

"Adequate ideas are born when the mind perceives things through the lens of universal principles."

"The greater the external forces that determine us, the less we are ourselves."

"Grief and joy both indicate a transition in one's power of being; the difference is which direction."

"Those who love according to understanding rather than imagination love truly."