Spinoza, Baruch

"He who has a true love of God must rejoice that God rejoices in himself."

"Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear."

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

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

"He that imagines that he is loved, in return imagines that he loves."

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

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

"The more the mind understands all things as necessary, the greater is the power of the mind."

"Human bondage, its strength and character or, in other words, human impotence in moderating and checking the affects."

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

"In so far as the mind understands all things as necessary, it has a certain power of affecting the emotions."

"God is the immanent cause, not the transient cause of all things."

"The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge."

"No thing can be destroyed except through an external cause."

"The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God."

"Joy is man's transition from a lesser to a greater perfection."

"The individual exists only as a mode under the infinite attributes of God."

"Freedom is the desire and power to preserve one's being."

"Sadness is man's transition from a greater to a lesser perfection."

"Nature does not work for goals or purposes."

"The more each individual endeavors, and is able to endeavor, to preserve his being, the more virtue he possesses."

"Desire is the very essence of man."

"In nature there is no good or evil; these are human judgments."

"The mind and body are one and the same thing."

"Hatred can never be good."

"The endeavor wherewith each thing endeavors to persist in its being is nothing else than the actual essence of the thing itself."

"Affections which are passions cease to be passions the moment we form a clear and distinct idea of them."

"With the aid of self-control and method, we may at last discover who we are."

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

"To be determined to action is to be alive; to be determined by external causes alone is to be dead."