Spinoza

"Active emotions lead to human perfection."

"Things are conditioned to exist in this or that particular way."

"He laughs best who laughs last."

"The more perfect a thing is, the more it acts and the less it is acted on."

"God is an eternal and infinite being."

"Pain is the transition to a lesser state of perfection."

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

"The mind is eternal insofar as it understands."

"Better to be feared than pitied."

"Patience is a virtue of the strong."

"The free man thinks of nothing less than of death."

"We are determined by external causes to exist and act."

"Imagination is knowledge of the first kind."

"All determination is negation."

"The mind endeavors to persevere in its being."

"No one can love or hate a thing which they understand thoroughly."

"God is the cause of himself."

"Time is something relative to imagination."

"Admiration is imagination of a thing in which the mind is so engaged that it is incapable of thinking of other things."

"Human power is very limited and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes."

"Anything, insofar as it can be conceived by another thing, determines the active power of that other thing."

"The endeavor of self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue."

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

"Knowledge of good and evil is nothing but emotion of joy or sadness."

"Fear is sadness born of the idea of a future or past thing of which we imagine the issue to be doubtful."

"Hope is an inconstant joy, born of the image of a thing past or future."

"Hatred can never be good."

"Nature is always the same."

"The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things."

"The more we understand things in their eternal aspect, the greater is our power of action."