Baruch Spinoza Quotes

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

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

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

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

It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.

Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.