Baruch Spinoza

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.

Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.

Do not weep do not wax indignant. Understand.

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

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking...

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

those, who are believed to be most self__based and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious

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

The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men.

men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.

Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Even more, in the created thing, is a perfection that she exists; since the greatest of all imperfections is, not to exist.

In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Such things as are good simply because they have been commanded or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among actions that are the offspring, as it were, or fruit of a sound mind and of intellect.

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.